Lindisfarne – Forgus 37 – 7,5t (>9t equipped)
October 2005- February 2006

3rd quarter of the circumnavigation with Lindisfarne,
Winter stopover in Lagos, Portugal.

After almost six months of intensive sailing , it's quite relaxing not to feel the pressure to take off if the whether is right for sailing.
After reaching Lagos 8 of October, we where quite busy with maintenance of the yacht and keeping up with all new friends in the marina before we left for Gothenburg the 9th of November.
Göteborg/Stockholm/Helsingborg for 6 weeks become a very pleasant and intensive period. I don't remember us being alone one single night. There where quite unbelievable many old and new friends wanting to meet us. The first evening there where a pup evening with our circum navigation club, JRSK, then we flew to Stockholm meeting relatives. Bjorn was even able to work some days. Bjorn stayed in Stockholm while Annika stopped over in Gothenburg, before we met again in Helsingborg to celebrate Björns mothers 80th birthday. We managed even to meet Christel and Harald, sailing friends living in Helsingborg harbour.
Back in Göteborg to keep up with our meeting schedule. Another meeting with JRSK, where Annika showed computer whether in combination with computer charts. Bjorn managed to squeeze in a two days working journey to Brussels before we left Sweden for Portugal/Lagos on the 20th of December, just before the snow!
During the hole period in Göteborg we lived in our friends, Agneta & Anders, house, we where also lucky to be able to borrow their 2nd car. Talk about service!

The Algarve coast at Lagos in January

Back in Lagos Pia and Tord had arranged a welcome back dinner in their yacht Ayla. They had also looked after Lindisfarne when we where abroad. Our yacht was in perfect shape. The batteries where on 100% despite the fridge had been on and no charging except the solar panel.
Portugal had now totally recovered from the dry summer, everything was now green and nice. The nature is fantastic. In the autumn almost everything looks totally dead, and then after a few weeks with rain...

Christmas evening dinner was executed in Ayla expanded with the crew from the Norwegian yacht Josephine.
New Years evening was spent in Lindisfarne with the same team. When there are only three Scandinavian yachts in the marina, its easy becomes a habit to meet and be able to talk native spoken language and be understood. Even then you don't always be understood! Later in February another Swedish yacht, Noeva, joined us in Lagos.

A bunch of crazy Scandinavian

We had plans for visiting friends in Spain, but it turned out to be very complicated and expensive, and we where actually ready for such a journey that short after coming back from Sweden.
Instead we made a weekend trip to London Boat show together with Pia and Tord. They bought a Water maker to be delivered ex vat in Gibraltar. We got some material from Selden, the mast producer in Göteborg, to be able to adjust the deck ring and support the mast, passing through the ring. The London whether turned out better than expected, only one day with rain and some degrees above 0. We managed even to have time for a theatre performance, Phantom of the Opera. 0530 Sunday morning the fire alarm vent on! No sign of any smoke, so dressed very relaxed and went the sex stairs down to the street, waiting for the fire brigade. They turned up 20 minutes after the alarm went on. Lucky there where no fire, only false alarm.

Annika working with the mast

Back in Lagos there where no rest. The mast had to be fixed, an item that took us two days of work. We have a new mast but the old deck ring. They didn't match 100% so some adjustments had to be done.
We have, outside a short sailing to the neighbour village Alvor, not been sailing so far this winter. But we wanted to fix the mast before we had any new forces effecting the mast.

Aylas water maker was delivered in Gibraltar. To be able to avoid the VAT the yacht had to be a ship in transit, and then of course the yacht had to come to Gibraltar! From the 2nd to the 9th of February we sailed with Pia and Tord in Ayla the 400 nm return trip to Gibraltar. To Gibraltar we used the motor a lot, but on our way back to Lagos we had sun and tailwind most of the time.  With some accurate calculations we managed to pass the sound without any difficulties and had a nice sailing up to Barbete with sun and a quarter wind about 20 knots.
From Barbete to Rota we got tougher conditions. Still quarter wind, but much stronger, 30 knots with 40,45knots in long gusts. Luckily the wind come over land, so the sea state was moderate. Being a Bavaria 38, Ayla was to us who are used with a nice deep bleu water hull, almost like dingy. Sometime it was not possible to keep the course with high sea and strong wind on the quarter.

Rota in Spain

We staid one extra day in Rota, to be able to visit the home of Sherry in Jerez. It turned out to be a nice and tasty experience!

The sailing west over the bay of Cadiz to Faro become a relaxing story. Wind 15 knots on the quarter gave us a  speed over 6 knots the hole day, but a long day. We anchored inside Calutra after dark in spite we had started from Rota before sunrise. The last day to Lagos was a dull motor trip with rain in front of us the whole day. But luckily it staid there! We arrived Lagos just in time to get the bridge opened.
Our conclusion was that with some respect to the whether you can sail very nice down here all year around.

Now we have to speed up the maintenance work on Lindisfarne. We have a long list to go through, to be able to go out on some nice day sailing trips before we haul out to have the waterline raised for the third time!
We have been washing the waterline many times since we left Göteborg.
In the mean time we do walks and bike trips around Lagos. The Almond tree is in full blossom and a lot of flowers on the ground. Sometime we do a bit of Bole with our neighbours and at night we try to catch up reading, make plans for the future sailing routes and there is a lot to do with the computers!

April weather in January, one day with sun and the next with wind and rain

We are planning to leave Algarve for Madeira in mid April, with a route to the Canaries, Cap Verde and landfall Brazil in July. After that we are not really sure if we are going south or stay there and then go north to the Caribbean. Our goal is to go south to Patagonia, but whether will govern as always.

14 February 2006
Annika & Björn
S/Y Lindisfarne

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