Cascais to Culatra

Oma, Oom Wouter, Tante Caroleijne and mini-monkey Avery joined us for a weekend while we were in Cascais.  Even with a full house of 9 people on board we didn’t feel cramped.  It was a super nice and relaxing visit and so great to see how Avery (just turned 2) is growing and developing and incredibly cute.  Also nice to have the reminder that although we are no longer living in Amsterdam we can always get together.

Cascais is a cosy and comfortable town with an easy train connection to Lisbon.  The marina, though unfriendly, is well equipped with good restaurants, chandleries and a sailmaker who took the time to quickly make us a canvas case to protect our sailing dinghy between rather more important assignments from the Volvo Ocean boats in the area.

The Tijd showed up on the day before we departed so Macsen got to play again with his good buddies Tim and Jelle.  The three of them are remarkable, they can lose themselves in each action activity for hours, chattering away and dreaming up all sorts of adventures to either physically experience or share in their vivid imaginations.

We left Cascais with a twinge of sadness, a feeling that we are getting used to. The length of time we spend in a place is, where possible, proportional to how happy and comfortable we feel there. Thus in those places where we have spent more than a week it becomes extremely difficult to tear ourselves away as it is the closest to the familiarity of home that we have. Fortunately, we are often pleasantly surprised by the next location as well.

From Cascais we set out on an overnight trip to Ilha da Culatra in the South of Portugal. For most of the night there were 20 knots of wind on a broad reach and the waves were kinder to us that they had been to date along this coast.  We did need to execute a storm gybe in the middle of the night as we rounded Cabo de São Vicente and the wind had temporarily increased to almost 30 knots.  This is a nerve racking manoeuvre in lighter conditions during the day but with careful planning it went off smoothly.

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