Madeira

Madeira is the main Island in the small archipelago cosisting of Madeira, porto Santo, Ihlas Selvagens and Ihlas Desertas about 500 nautical miles off the Portuguese coast. The capital is Funchal and around 260.000 people live on the entire island. The climate is sub tropical, it's green and colorful with a lot of flowers.

The passage from Graciosa was boring and annoying. Motoring and hand steering in a rolly swell for the first 36 hours, putting the sails up and taking them down again 4 times a day. The last 24 hours we could sail. Just as the sun came up, so did the wind and we engaged the windvane and fell asleep in the sun.

We could smell Madeira long before we could see the island itself. The visibility was poor and the island wasn't visible until we were 4M from it. If we hadn't had the GPS I would have had serious doubt about our position.

It was great seing real trees and flowers again. Funchal is a beatuiful city. We rented a car for a day together with Dan on "She of Feock" and drove up into the mountains. It's really spectacular. Forests, flowers, fog, waterfalls, you name it. We took a walk between the two highest peaks. It's like a scene from Sound of Music.

We stayed almost three weeks in Funchal, waiting for winds to go to Portugal. Eventually we gave up and sailed to the little Island of Porto Santo, 42M from Funchal. That's where we are now, still waiting to go to Potugal. It's the wrong way of going really. The right way would be to go to the Azores and from there to England, don't want to do that though.

 Right now we miss Funchal. The weather was great and there was lots to do although the marina was expensive. Porto Santo is very nice but it's cold, grey and raining.