Next challenge, and the longest jet, was to sail from Lagos Algarve to “Ilha da Madeira” the Portuguese rocky island, famous for its many flowers and good temperature all year long, far out in the Atlantic ocean, situated 510 Nm away. The ZyGrib file said that we would have NW winds and not to much, for the next three days,that was 8-10 September, so perfect for us. We started out of Lagos with absolutely no wind at all, so we had to go out for motor until wind and swells turned up. We sat sail after 1½ hour, main and asymmetric spinnaker, and sailed for half an hour so. Not enough wind but large swells.
We did not see any other ships but a cargo-ship but luckily a lot of dolphins visited us. Finally at 16:30 we got wind and sat main and asymmetric spinnaker until 17:00 upwind so jib instead of spinnaker. We got the best 24 h measurement jet, 192 Nm , obtained between first and second night sailing with main and asymmetric spinnaker.
A lot of stars in the sky and sometimes, late night, a beautiful tiny moon made the long nights easy to overcome. The threatening black clouds, together with the sundown, were amazing and happily for us they did not give any rain or to much wind. From now we sailed for sail until we were close to land and on the third day we pooled out the asymmetric spinnaker to windward with the spinnaker pool.
On The fourth day sailing Lars caught the first Gould Mackerel ever, after changing blink. The fish tasted great in the evening! It was quit comfortable sailing so we could start the gen-set and bake some Danish rye-bread. We sailed 510 Nm on three days and 14 hours and 40 minutes.
In the middle of the night we got sight of the black rocky island Madeira with fabulous light cascades along the coast. After a few hours we were moored at an empty pontoon in the Marina da Quinta Lorde. We were woken up next morning at 9 a clock by three harbour attendees helping us to move to a better place to moor.
After having bought very nice bred at the bar for breakfast, we relaxed and got some more sleep. It was a rainy day so relaxing the rest of the day.
We took the local bus next morning to Funchal city and it was a very exiting road trip on the mountain op and down in frightening speed. Getting of the bus on the avenida along the harbour we met a Swedish sailor couple, Ann-Marie and Micke, We had coffee with them and a nice talk about sailing around the world. They did that a few years ago in there Najad sailing boat, Ellos. A tour uptown for lunch and shopping at the big supermarket was on the program before the bus took us back to the beautiful but remote Marina da Quinta Lorde.
Next morning we took of for España and The Canarian Island Teneriffe and the city Santa Cruz. We were leaving Portugal after sailing around there for three weeks and three days enjoying it immensely.