Against the wind and the celebration of Carmen

She must have been a hell of a popular lady!, Hampus says. He´s refering to Carmen, the madonna of Camarinas, the village where we now are. The fiesta and celebration of Carmen is going on its third day and there´s still one more day of to go. Every morning at 9.30 the shooting anf firecracking begins, and then continues through out the day. Yesterday it was the day of the Boat procession.

Lugnet före stormen...

In action..

All the boats of the village going out at the same time, fishing vessels, motor yachts, sailingboats, jetskies - every floating vessel possible and the faster it goes the better. Decorated with juniper, flowers, banners and flags. Lying at the hammerhead this was a rocky experience!

The spanish way of "manana, manana" seems to apply to everyday life. The procession was supposed to be at 10 am, but since no one obviously considered the 3 meter tide here, they all were aground so it had to be posponed until 1 am. It´s a charming way of life when your not in a hurry. The celebrations this day was ended by spectacular Fireworks. Most amazing one we´ve ever seen. Even beautiful fireworks on the surface of the sea.

Today Ingeborg needs a good scrubbing, she´s full of dust and ashes. But hey, since the celebration isn´t over yet we best not bother with this, my guess is that this isn´t over by far. Oddly enough all the other guestboats in the marina has chosen to leave.  Still one more day of partying until 5 am...

 Since Sines we´ve been fighting the prevailing northerlies of the coast of Portugal and Spain. Hard work! That means motoring in light winds, trying to make it as far up the coast as possible when possible. Luckily we´ve ended up in nice places with nice people.

Sines. The marina´s just to the left. The village´s up on the hil

We spent midsummer in Sines, but calculating it all wrong, we consumed the herring we saved for this special occation a week earlier. But we still managed to preserve some swedish traditions and invited the other swedish boat there over for a real swedish midsummer strawberry cake.

In all of Sines there´s not a single internetcafé. This we learnt the hard way. After two days of asking around we ended up in the tourist office lending their computer.

Penich

After some motoring: Peniche! A kind of cute town. I just have to quote the dutch couple (in their 60s) of "Mama Concha". They are just about to finish their circumnavigation: "We feel so fresh. Like we can do anything!" What a great experience they had.

Peniche is a huge fishing harbour. This meant that life became a little bit harder in the way that we had store away everything aboard like we were out at sea, beacause of the wash the fishing vessels caused speeding by.

Amazing view sailing - flower pots in the windows!!

 

After some more  motoring: Baiona! Here we met up with friends we met last summer in Scotland, the dutch catamaran Miss Poes and the norwegian Idun.. What a coindicence we all should end up in northern Spain at the same time. A week of vaccation with great company and good food. Yes, how lucky we are to just be able to write that - vaccation from the vaccation!

And we finally got to sail a catamaran! Everytime I´m aboard Miss Poes I´ve been flabbergasted about everything they keep on top of shelves, tables and not to mention flowerpots while sailing.