We’ve found a new favorite island. Madeira is just fantastic!

We arrived at Calheta on the western end of Madeira after a full day sail from Porto Santo to once again find Horizon waving at us as we entered the narrow harbour. Anders and Anette have been in Madeira for about a week and plan to be here in Calheta for another week, so we made plans to rent a car and generally have some nice socializing to blow away the Covid blues!

First we had a couple of projects to take care of: Toodle-oo!’s anchor light was on the blink and despite an effort in Porto Santo to fix the issue by replacing the connections at the top of the mast, it was still a problem. Anders offered to go up the mast with a view to re-connecting the wires, but when he got there, he found the wiring intact and the lights all working. He jiggled them around trying to make them fail to no avail – so I guess we still have a potential problem – but for now, all is good!

The following day, Anders and I played with the rigging on both our Outbounds. Horizon is only 3 years old (Toodle-oo! is 15), and our rigs were tuned very differently, with Toodle-oo!’s being much stiffer. Anders developed a very nifty way of evaluating the rig’s tension and we then set about stiffening Horizon to more closely mimic Toodle-oo!   Ander’s measurement technique is written up on his blog here. For anyone with a cruising sailboat, this technique will probably prove very interesting…

We had a car for 3 days and made full use of it, travelling most of the island and stopping for walks along the way. Oohs and Aahs at every turn – the scenery is spectacular. Of course we managed to climb the highest peak on the island Pico Ruivo de Santana at 1862M. Take a look at the pics – clicking on them will make them bigger…

To cap off a great first week on Madeira, Laurie just found out that her 28 month long attempt to gain Portuguese Citizenship has been successful! (Though we don’t know how long it will take to get a passport…)

 

Our first sail of the season was a quickie with dock mates Ross and Lisa (s/v Betsy) – just out and about around Lagos. Allowed us to remember some stuff – and realize that we’d forgotten other stuff. Ross quickly learned the boat and had her self-steering in no time! I need another lesson from him!!!

So we headed east and made it all the way to Portimao – 8 miles away – and anchored off Ferragudo where we stayed for a couple of nights to catch our breath! We enjoyed a gathering aboard Toodle-oo! with Lagos dock friend Martin and his crew aboard Topaz Rival one night and then we started discussing our Mediterranean cruising plans for the season…

The unexpected outcome is that we are now anchored in the harbour at Porto Santo, some 450 miles south west of mainland Portugal!!!  Plans never last on Toodle-oo!

We decided on visiting the Madeiran Islands before venturing into the Med for three reasons: 1. It would let the whole Covid entry regulations sort themselves out, 2. because I’m a resident of Portugal, it wouldn’t impact our stay in the Schengen area – since Madeira and Porto Santo are part of Portugal and 3. with 90 days in Schengen, our clock will now be running out as the weather deteriorates – so we can head south to Tunisia or east to Turkey, both outside Schengen…

We had a good passage to Porto Santo – 64 hours and arrived to find our sister ship Horizon – with Anette and Anders – were still here, along with Franz aboard Skellig – so we had friends to play with too!

On the way down, our new chart plotters gave us grief – alarming with failed AIS or GPS every few minutes. However, I knew that with Anders close by, I had a real shot at getting the bloody things sorted out as it was inevitably a Billyism that screwed them up. (Fortunately that turns out to be the case and they are now operating beautifully – thank you Anders!)

What a lovely place Porto Santo is!  It’s a very dry climate and rocky with a superb beach running all the way down the eastern shoreline. We had a lovely couple of days touring around on a scooter and walking up 3 peaks along the way. We’ve also been treated to some wonderful food – considerably more flavorful than the offerings on the mainland.

We had a lovely first walk – to lunch:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We toured a bit…

Then we climbed Pico de Ana Ferreiro

Then we climbed Pico Branco

Day two on the scooter we climbed Pico do Castelo which was really just an exercise in stair-climbing… and then Pico do Facho which was very frustrating since we couldn’t find a way to the actual top which didn’t require climbing gear!

Today is a recovery day!

 

 

 

Our last sailing foray of of 2020 was to Culatra – a lovely island with fantastic long beach and sheltered anchorage in the Algarve…

Our winter months were spent in Marina de Lagos in Southern Portugal (The Algarve). Temperatures were kind to us – with low overnight temperatures rarely dipping into the 30’s and daily highs often in the mid 60’s. Not much precipitation – but what there was, was often accompanied by Saharan sand!

We were able to enjoy walks and bike rides through the local countryside – and took the occasional car trip in a rental costing as low as €8 per day!

And Laurie out-did herself with countless new dishes using freshest ingredients…

In November, Abigail decided she’s going to get married – not sure how much input Greg had to that decision(!) and we joined them via Zoom as they enjoyed what looked like a fabulous event at their favorite pub!

For Christmas, we decorated the boat with some lights – and then foolishly took a swim.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In February, Laurie had a very significant birthday – so we celebrated as best we could on the dock, attempting to maintain some form of social distancing with our new friends in Lagos – enjoying some decent bubbly and of course, Chocolate cake! (The marina’s Marinaros only got ticked off when one of our party set off an alarm of some description!)

 

Several projects were attended to – most notably the windlass which pretty much died on us at the end of last sailing season. It took 4½ months for the package of repair parts to reach Toodle-oo! from California with diabolical customs issues delaying everything. In the end, the parts were inadequate for the damage within the windlass so additional parts were ordered…

We also replaced both chart plotters – which also got held up in customs – but that was due to the Brexit debacle – which was causing no end of issues for cruising Brits!

In February Laurie headed home to the USA to tend to ailing parents and in the end her father sadly passed away. She and Neal managed to relocate his wife Jeanne to assisted living close by Laurie’s mum and to put Jim & Jeanne’s house up for sale.

On the lighter side, while over there, Laurie perfected a range of cocktails and the clear winner was her Expresso Martini – which went very well with sorting out her father’s coin collection!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She also got to visit with best friend Sandra – and to attend Sandra’s son Tyler’s new bride, Christina’s wedding shower…

When Laurie called me one day in late April, she reminded me that she’d promised to look after Stephanie’s house, dogs, cats and fish at the end of May, I decided that 2 months apart was already enough and headed over to join her!

While there, we had an interesting (long!) car ride down to Texas to visit with Abigail, Greg and Greg’s parents, Tom and Lois, spending a lovely weekend at their Lake House and enjoying my first beer can chicken barbecue.

It was great to catch up with everyone back in the US – and of course nice to be able to arrange Covid vaccinations for both of us.

We arrived back on Toodle-oo! June 1^st and finished repairs to the Windlass with the additional parts we’d brought over with us and managed to leave the dock on June 9^th headed east into the Mediterranean.