Rare Commonities

  It has been two weeks since we have come to this southern Peak in portugal.  It all started when our valve broke on our engine, that left us in bad waves, and wind coming from the direction we wanted to travel(as usual).  It seemed as if the guides that said you souldnt do this route after october were right after all, lesson learned.  Travel during the times of past sailors, ok got it, but obviously our jobs wouldn't allow it, so here we are in the wrong season, doing the wrong route.  And seemingly breaking out 36 year old boat in the process.

A brief recap of our hours before we our in Porto Baleeira.

"We hit a rough spot right before we got to the cove we are in, front sail snapped coming around a peak of cliffs, weather and waves pushing us into the wall, engine was broke, had to jump up front and re run a new line and bring the sail down and up.  The system had seized to bring it down as well. It seemed everything was against us, but luckily we tacked just enough to get us around the peak.  But as we came around the waves were too strong for our boat. And would round us out every time, leaving us so we couldn't stear, like when you turn your car on ice, and we tried to stear out but the wave would push us back in.  We did this for about 5 hours, before we could come up and get into a cove.  The waves beat us up for the next three nights, broke out dinghy loose and smashed it on the rocks.  We threw out a second anchor and the waves were bringing us up and down and the current seemed as if it was in circles. Ending up snapping one anchor line, and luckily the second was chain, but it snapped it loose twice.  Spent the hole night chasing down the anchor line on the bow."

So here we sit, as I said, for two weeks, waiting for our new dinghy to arrive and our new parts from Lagos, sopromar, the Volvo Penta Dealer.  The parts arrived today, but allas, no one in the mind will lend me a torque wrench.  It seems they are very expensive and you can't buy them anywhere. I ran around lagos for 4 hours trying to track one down to no avail.  So we have to order one of them aswell.  So, here starts the waiting game again.  Hopefully it will be here by Tuesday, since our weather Looks like it will finally be on our side.

There are no water facilities here, and the nearest supermarket is around 2 miles away.  We made our frist trip today, and we are out of water in the next few days. The gas station that is at the marina seems it is only open on demand, and I am not sure how to get their attention, and they will probably charge 15 cents more a liter.  That leaves me to taking a trip to the gas statino that is 3 miles away to get gas.  Seems my legs will be getting stronger during this stay as well.

The windex is also broke from our trip on the waves as we come into sagres, we were heeled over so far and the waves pushed us so the top of the windex no longer had gravity on its side.  It seemed as though the waves may of taken us a few times, but luckily we made it through.

The table mount broke as well on that venture as It crashed into me as I was trying to get the tools to repair our broken jib.  I found an old mount in the water locker as well, it seems the last owner had the excat thing occur to him, but instead of choosing a better solutino replaced the part with the same part....genius.

Starting this wednesday we should be onto a better look into things.  The Genoa has a new line, we replaced the main line, ordered a new Dinghy, Motor mount, and we went electric with the dinghy motor.  Although we have yet to get a battery to operate it as we are snooping to find the best, this is our first battery shopping experience, good fun.  We were going to purchase a Windex, but the Sopromar store at the Lagos Marina wants 62 euro for an arrow that points the way the wind direction is coming from because it has glow in the dark tape on the bottom.  I just couldn't buy it.  We have the new parts for the engine, but here we sit, without a torque wrench waiting for spain to come through.  Now we will have one on board for when I decide to take the other head off and replace the valve springs on it as well in some preventive maintanence.

  While we were here I also was trying to re rig the jib, and it was jimmy rigged from the last owner and something didn't seem right, so I ended up tearing the drum off the Front Stay and looking at its ineards.  The bearings were completely rusted beyond repair. We attempted rust removal chemicals and boiling water for about 4 hours before we called it fair.  We ended up finding a British company that handles bearings and I took the measurements and as I was leaning over the side of the boat trying to get signal from the wireless that is over 200 meters away, I was able to place an order.  Oh, but were the measurements right?  No I acidently ordered the wrong parts, needed to place another order and then call the company in order to confirm to remove the false order.  They could barely here me.  I ended repeating myself 20 times.

All the parts are ordered..... Come to find out, no one can delvier packages to the post office except for the monopoly CTT which the government owns....great....  We luckily called the local courier and tracked our packages before they sent them backed.  They would not try another delivery without a contact number. A local contact number.  At this time our dighny was lost from the storm and we were using our internet from one bar to try to make broken calls over skype to the company, while still repeating ourselves 20 times.  We have no dinghy, we have no number, we have no address....how are we going to get our parts for the furler, our new dinghy and other packages.  

  Someone had to suit up....  Since I spent nearly 6 hours repeatedly diving to the bottom to retreive our fouled anchors in CasCais, it was definatly the skippers turn to earn their keep.  Stef suited up and swam the 200 meters to shore to get a prepaid phone card from the post office in order to call the company in order for them to deliver the package the following day, she had to swim back to the boat, and then again to retrieve the packages the following day.  There will be a video Posted.

After all these events we have some sun on the horrizon, and maybe the only motivation I have in writing this post at all, as it seems some people wonder what has happened to the 26' boat that can't make it from the portugeese shore.  We are here, and with the following weather window we will be leaving the Contentital Europe and traveling to the Canary Islands on Wednesday...so help us...

Hopefully with the engine fixed, water supplies topped off, food in our belly, and our bed not soaked from sea water coming over the Bow.