Made port in Portugal=vital repairs needed

So...

I am delivering a yacht from France to Tortola in the BVI´s..

This is unfinished I have some videos to attach and some other interesting facts and videos (esp good is my cooking in a storm like Gordon Ramsay...I´ll add these here when I can)

I made it to France, Les Sable DÓlonne

http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=les+sables+d%C3%B3lonne&sll=53.799303,-1.551791&sspn=0.190198,0.439453&ie=UTF8&ll=46.500519,-1.771374&spn=0.055418,0.109863&t=h&z=13&iwloc=addr

--found the boat (its a Lagoon 440) http://www.lagoon.co.pt/l_440.htm

and met up with the other crew.

Mike is 28 and is a sound engineer from Brighton and plays bass in a Reggea band.

Matt (age not specified=36) is the skipper and is a skipper.

We spent 2 days washing the water tanks out and covering all surfaces in the boat in case they got demolished and generally checking all the kit in case it breaks. I had to climb the mast to strap a radar reflector to the rigging (this stops big tankers/ freightships sailing over us)

This is me trying not to look a bit scared..

View of Marina

This is a shot down to the deck

We did other cool stuff but I dont have long and there´s lots to tell. We noticed that the generator was leaking into the internal bilge (inside the hull) so we would only charge the batteries from the motor (this means that no electricity if its windy). Apologies if this is a bit dry, I am wiped out...more on that below.

Our last night we ate on the boat (I made Meatballs and pasta) & went to town and had a few beers, when we came back the crew next to our boat invited us in for a drink, they were a bunch of crazy Frenchmen taking thier boat to Anapolis in the US.

This is they (Mike tuning thier Guitar in corner)

We left Les Sables DÓlonne on Sunday. There was a nice southerly and the sun was out. It was a bit choppy out of the Harbour and Mike decided to get sea-sick on top of being hungover.

I opted to take the first watch (a watch takes 3 hours, they rotate so you get 6 off then its your next watch). During your watch you are the helm and you keep to a certain course, and make sure everything is okay. At night this is made more interesting by the fact that there are trawlers and big ships which might run into you so you keep an eye open for them (you can see them by their navigation lights and different light tell you the size, direction and speed of the boat---yeah yeah boring).

So, my first watch was 6pm-9pm on the first night, I was in boardies the whole time, autopilot was on--I needed to adust it a few times to keep the sails going but it was very peaceful, lots of time to look at the massive expanse of blue and think about stuff--I am becoming very good at sitting and thinking about stuff. I watched a very handsome sunset, the first one I remember where the sun just plops out of view, I took a picture but I felt it didn´t do it justice and i´m sure you can imagine how it looks (big yellow thing becomes big orange thing, then isn´t as high up then becomes slightly bigger red thing then isn´t there), well it was so pretty and I was so happy with the whole situation that I stood up and had a little clap "Bravo, bravo" just then Skipper came and relieved me of my watch (off to a good start).

So, off to bed, nice little quarters in the front Port hull (thats left for the non-mariners) and I share a head (toilet) with Mike. The Galley (kitchen) links the 2 sides of the boat.

My second watch started at 3am through to 6am. And the highlight here was that I almost hit a lobster pot since you can only see 10meters in front when its pitch black. That morning the auto pilot broke.

It was quite a nice sail really, the only things to note are that we saw a Whale on our 2nd day and dolphins saw with us all night most nights--more of this later.

The next few days passed fairly nicely until the wind started to build on Wednesday, I took the 6am watch from Mike and before long it had built up to a 20-25 knot howler. Mike can´t helm in those conditions (yet--I´ve since been giving him free lessons--during my watch too) so Mat and I were alternating 4hour shifts. Its really tough steering a massive cat. in these conditions but its fun you have to try and get both hulls to roll the waves at once, when they smash then you flex the entire hull and cracks start to appear...

Me cooking sitting on the floor so as not to drop anything in the waves.

Me at the helm...on a nice day..

Anyway after 2 days of this we had broken--

-The reefing for the Genoa (the whole sail had to come down, at 3am in the massive surf, i had to fight just to keep mat from being washed off the foredeck)

-2 of the 3 reefs for the main (these just tore in the big stuff)

-the topping lift (we hit a calm in the middle of the storm and looked up to notice it had just gone, just smashed off the shackle and blown away!!!)

so we dashed for port in 30+knots of wind in the rain using a sat nav and alot of hope, by this time I had helmed for 9 hours straight since 3am

Visibility was down to 200yards vso you can imagine the colourful language when a small seaside town loomed out of the mist, we were 200yards from shore, I guess we can add the depth meter to the list of the broken items. I headed back out to sea the Port was 16miles south...

We finally limped into Port Lexicon? I´m not sure if this is the right name, but its near Porto.

We didn´t leave until Sunday in the end. We needed rope and there was nobody open on the weekend.

The port we were at had the Oporto sailing club attached, we met the President who knew of a Chandeler. He was in town for a wedding and would be there until Sunday lunchtime. El Presidente offerred to give us a lift in the morning.

We met the guy outside the Yacht club and he drove us at about 90miles an hour through the sunday morning traffic to the old part of Oporto, its absolutley beautiful, the lanes are about 5metres from one side to the other and all the houses lean over onto the lanes. I recommend to anyone going there---also check out the new park in the city. They also surf on the beach.

The Chandeler was a really old salty dog of about 75, his wife and he were really lovely, everything I said they fell about laughing (they thought I was Canadian??¿¿), but we got our ropes and the extra shackels to repair the broken genoa halyard, incidentally the Redbull plane people were in town that weekend..

Back to the marina and back up the mast for me. When you go up the mast you have to strap into a harness, this thing is designed to slowly and painfully rid you of your manhood whist making your feet turn blue. Added to my healthy fear of heights it isn´t a nice experience--especially right at the top when the halyard starts making funny jerking motions...but we got the genoa fixed and the new reefing lines threaded.

up mast hijinx

marina

So a final farewell to the marina bar and its off to sea. We were making for the Canaries. Surely all the bad weather was behind us¿¿

cooking at sea

how to stay sane on a long quiet watch