october 13, 2003

hi folks --

am still in portugal.  my landfall was at vianna do costello
in the north, from there we sailed down the coast and are now
on the southern coast of portugal called the algarve, just
before spain and gibraltar. have had lots of guests visiting,
so many that the other cruisers call my boat wonderland hotel.

the atlantic coast of portugal seems to have harbors every 20-40
miles for most of the way, so its easy to do day hops.  my limits
are about 50-60 miles/day and for that i need wind and waves to
cooperate.

we stopped in porto where the port wine cellars are.  went up
the river duoro into the town of porto and tied up next to a very
tall ladder in a concrete wall.  the tide there is 10-15 ft, so
we had to use very long lines to tie up with.  we were rafted next
to another boat, tied to them with short ropes and then to
the shore at the bow and stern with longer ones.  i had a length
of rope that was 150 ft. long (got it for hurricane season in
florida) and used it for the shore ropes.  we arrived at low tide,
so tied up tight then and were ok when the tide came in and made
the ropes loose.  another boat there had tied too tightly and the
force pulled his cleats out.  its very nice to be docked right
in downtown -- we could visit the port houses, drink too many free
samples of the port and just walk back to the boat.  learned that
one port house per day is sensible, that ladder after two port
houses is scary.

stayed a few days in each port until we got to lisbon, where we 
anchored at cascais, a 20 minute train ride from lisbon.  met other
boats there that we had met in the bahamas, then bermuda, then azores,
and finally mainland portugal.  went to see the play "my fair lady"
in portuguese.  now my portugese is limited to gallao (coffee with
milk), obrigada (thank you) and cerveja (beer) and maybe a dozen
other food words, so i didnt listen to the words much.  but i knew
the songs and had lots of time to watch the workings of the sets
and the bit player actors on the sides of the real action.  it was
fun.  also went to hear fado music -- a kind of portugese folk music
that seems to be somewhere between jazz and blue grass.  visited the
city of coimbra that is the university town and sintra that is the
summer residence of the portugese kings.  both towns were full of 
cool old buildings and were fun to explore and walk around.

my brother tom and his wife ellen came to visit for a week and we
sailed around lisbon and did touristy things.  ellen had to go back
to work, but tom, who is a contractor and between jobs decided to
stay on a couple of extra weeks.  also my nieces, libby and susha,
who are my permanent crew for the next year while i explore the med
arrived.  for a few nights we had a very full boat with someone
sleeping in the cockpit each night.  fortunately it didnt rain.

we went up the river tejo at lisbon and sailed by all the fancy 
monuments that are on the postcards here.  it was pretty neat.  we
went into a marina near downtown and peter (as in macho peter)
parked the boat for the first time.  he picked a spot that i would
never have tried -- it was too small and not easy to get out of.
his method of parking was to go in too fast and then yell at
everyone else to do something fast to correct for going too fast.
we scraped another boat and hit the docks water/electric thing.
i went to the marina office and got us assigned a slip that was
actually easy for me to park in.  that was the first (and last)
time i let peter park.

in sesimbre, south of lisbon, we entered the harbor with the wind
blowing about 20 or 25 knots.  i am a total chicken at parking my
boat and although there was a marina in the harbor it was down a
skinny section with the wind blowing me toward the jetty.  i chickened
out and went over next to a catamarin that was tied up in the fishing
section of the harbor and asked to raft up to him.  he suggested that 
i tied to the other side of the pier that he was on and offered to 
help with my lines.  parking there was coming straight into the wind
instead of broadside to it and seemed doable.  it helped that tom is
6 feet 5, because the pier was way above the level of wonderlands
deck because the tide was low.  he was able to throw our lines up
to the waiting frenchman from the catamarin.  as soon as we got
parked, a local fisherman offered my nieces some octopus, polvo is
the portugese word.  they are mostly vegitarians and tried to tell
them that 1 or 2 was enough, but the fisherman prevailed and we 
ended up with 5 octopuses that we didnt know how to cook.  the
frenchman, jean marc, told us how to cook them and then marinate
them to make them tender.  either i did it wrong or tender is a
relative term.  we ate them in salad, i pounded them and fried them
like cracked conch in the bahamas,  we ate them plain in the marinade,
we had them for lunch, for dinner, ...  5 octopuses is a lot and with
my vegie nieces claiming not to like it, it lasted forever and really
stunk up the fridge.  the last bit suddenly disappeared from the boat
while i wasnt looking.  the frenchman invited us to dinner one night
for mackeral.  a fisherman friend of his brought lots of mackeral and
jean marc grilled them on the bbq.  we had a real portugese meal, starting
with white port and as an appetizer, octopus.  theirs was better than
mine.  then we had potatoes and mackeral and salad.  the mackeral were
little, i think i ate about 10 of them.  very yummy.

finally did some boat chores when we got to lagos on the southern coast --
changed oil, changed the feul filter, figured out the electrical stuff.
i am getting better at oil changes, this one only took 1/2 a roll of
paper towels instead of 2 rolls last time.  after changing the racor
feul filter i noticed that the feul in the glass bowl wasnt clear when
i shined the flashlight thru it from behind.  i asked a friend (scott
kuhner on tamure) about it and he said it was crud and should be cleaned
out.  he was so right, it was black oily stuff that didnt disolve in clean
diesel and required the other half roll of paper towels to get rid of.
the tool that worked best at cleaning it out was a chopstick.

i had bought a transformer (220 volts to 110 volts) further up the portugese
coast but it didnt work in lisbon.  wasnt sure what was wrong and had
lots of help and advice and some changing of wires around because blue
should be brown or vice versa.  something was definitely wrong.  going
into the box was 3 wires, one at 240 volts, and 2 at 0 volts, which is 
right.  but coming out of the box were again 3 wires, with 110 volts
between 2 pairs and 220 between the other pair.  this is wrong, it 
should be 110 between 2 pairs and 0 between the other one.  tried all
manner of random things, but nothing worked.  then my son laszlo and his
family came to visit and wanted to use hot water, music, all those normal
things that require electricity.  he looked at it and undid some of the
changes that other people had done and voila it worked.  the input side
of the transformer was wrong.  seems that some marinas are just plain
wired wrong and for european boats it doesnt matter, but for transformers
it does.  often the power places have back to back outlets and one will
be right and the other the mirror image since it is easier to wire that way.
thanks laszlo.  he is visiting for another week so i hope to have him figure
out the rest of my flaky electrical system.  my battery charger doesnt seem
to work on the transformed power, probably because the power is 50 cycle
instead of 60 cycle in the US.  also my wind generator doesnt see to work,
even though it was supposedly fixed just before i left.

am planning to come back to the US for some of the winter, definitely
christmas and probably most of november and january as well.  not sure
where i will leave the boat, portugal is nice, but i would rather be
into the med itself if the fall weather cooperates.  so far fall here
has been awesome, nice sunny days, ocean not too cold to swim in, cool
nights for good sleeping.

hugs.

-evi