Nazaré

At last, on August 14 around 12:30am, we left Leixoés for Nazaré. There’s less wind than the day before, it’s force 3 W-NW. The weather is delightful and the swell has decreased considerably. Till the end of the afternoon we will run at a reasonable 4 knots on average, we pass by Aveiro. Then when we arrive near Cabo Mondego (before Figueira da Foz) the wind falls down completely and the light air that remains will even veer SE. In fact we’ll stay on the spot all night and a big part of the next morning right in front of this damn cape. The wind is so weak that sometimes a bigger wave than others make us do a 360° turn (personally I made 5 turns!). The wind pilot is of course out of the game, we persist pathetically at steering but it’s useless. The sails are beating, the boat is rolling, and it’s exhausting! Ludo brings the sails down and goes to sleep, then up again, we even think of putting the mooring light on to let the fishermen around us know that we are stuck! We have covered only 35miles; we turn off the GPS it’s too depressing. Happily for our pleasure there’s an amazing concentration of fluorescent plankton all around us, each move in the water creates an explosion of fluo green arabesques. The next day the wind waits until the beginning of the afternoon to start blowing and again force 3; we calculate that at this speed we’ll be in Nazaré in the middle of the night. Unacceptable! Ludo decides to make experiments with the sails and will finally change Ata Jata from a sloop to a cutter by adding a jib to the Genoa. And it’s working: we reach 5 knots. Anyway, we’ll arrive in Nazaré after dark, around 10pm; the little marina in a corner of the fishing harbor seems packed. It took us 34 hours to sail 97 miles (hmmm...)! We are fried! We’ll spend the night docked side to side to a fishing boat and we’ll go to the pontoon only the next day.