Sea of Change
We left Porto on Thursday the 5th of August. Our estimated journey length was about 36 hours, but in the end we managed to make it from Porto to Cascais in a mere 25 hours. The Atlantic was almost as flat as glass for much of the journey, which meant we had to motor for a considerable chunk of it. The kids got their chance to steer when we let them switch the auto pilot off for a bit, more so our youngest son (Micah) as he's suddenly taken an interest in being more into this whole sailing thing than his brother is. The two of them are highly competitive, a characteristic that isn't always endearing as we have to bear the brunt of most of their loud and angry arguments that somehow require parental mediation.
Sigh.
The decision to leave Porto was made because we saw weather to be favourable, but also, we'd been sitting in that Marina for over a week and all of us were getting a bit restless. The work we had done on the boat, to get the water maker functional, the windlass mechanism and attachments fixed, the compass and the autopilot working properly, it was, for the most part, successful.
Fortunately, the cost of the work done on the boat was surprisingly low, but then we were told this would be the case in Portugal. Porto was no exception, in fact it exceeded our expectations. The hourly rate for the work done on the boat was something like 35 Euros an hour, and for sure, it would have been triple that in the Netherlands.
Despite the Marina fees being higher than what we anticipated...you know, for the quality of the services provided being rather basic, foul toilets and poor wifi, it still wasn't as expensive as Cascais ended up being. Cascais is a beautiful place, a bit of the old mixed in with the new, but it really feels like a tourist destination, which can be a bit of a minus when it comes to something as simple as heading out for dinner, kind of impossible to find a free table.
The upside of the work we managed to get completed on the boat means that now on radar our boat is facing the right way forward. The water pump to the water maker is now drawing water from outside the boat, which is a relief, as this means there is nothing wrong with the through hole. The water make still needs more tinkering before it is fully operational, Jeroen has been sitting there racking his brain trying to figure out how to get it operational, mainly because the manufacturer sent us the parts mislabelling input and output areas that now have to be juggled about to find the right set up...not only this, upon searching up online, he has found that the instruction manual we were sent was a poor excuse for the full instructions available on their website.
There are just a few things that we really need and water is kinda up there on the top of the list.
If we have clean water, we can drink it, we can shower, we can wash dishes, we can brush our teeth. Basically, clean water means cleanliness and good health. Sure, the water may be so clean from a water maker as to be devoid of minerals, so we will have to find a way to add minerals to the water if we wish to cook with or drink it, but its hardly going to kill us. So water...it would be good to get the water maker operational, which at this stage, it is not. This leaves us dependent on Marinas for fresh water supply, which brings us back to paying fees that can sometimes beggar belief, like, how the hell do they get away with charging this much for such shoddy service?
We've been in some pristine marinas and we've been in some shit ones. The very first one we moored at in Portugal was so bad you had to watch your footing as you walked the pontoons as they had everything from planks to cleats missing. Something about this life, its like we are living the champagne life on a beer budget. It feels like just a normal life to us, but its not until you are in a marina and you see a young couple pull up in a catamaran big enough for our family that you realize...damn, people have a lot of money! They got the fancy headsets to communicate with each other, so they don't shout...and they have the nicest ropes and rigging...and you think...pfft, maybe its a charter! Lol.
The seaweed is always greener in some other ocean, eh?
We were in France somewhere when some Swedish guy sailed up and parked his boat next to us...he was envious of our boat even though his looked, to us, like a newer and almost similar boat. Turned out both our boats had been churned out by the same boatyard, but ours was a much coveted, now discontinued version that his was a copy of.
See? Seaweed. Greener.
The screwed up thing is that the bay is just as windy as the Marina, which one would expected to be quite protected, in fact...more windy, really. In the Marina we ended up blowing up one of the fenders as the wind was pushing the boat into the docking space with such strength that one of the fenders straight up "popped" its little valve. I know that is what fenders are for, but its been intense experiencing the wind in Portugal. Not sure if its just the region, but the wind gets to such a loud howl its like something from an old school scary movie.
We have to stick around for another day as we need to pick up the prescription eyeglasses we ordered for Micah. For a little under a year, Micah has been struggling with a rather obvious lazy eye. Initially we assumed it was because he had long hair which had hung over one eye for most of the time he had been rocking that hairstyle, but even a haircut didn't seem to fix the lazy eye. As time progressed, it became more and more obvious that the little man was not just struggling to focus his right eye, which was off to the shops most of the time while the other one picked up the change, but he was beginning to squint as well.
A bit of GoogleMD was all that we needed to realize that it was likely quite a serious problem and if we didn't do something about it sooner than later, we could end up with a permanent compromise of his eyesight.
He was a good sport about it, before we took him first to an Opthalmologist who firstly confirmed he needed glasses and secondly suggested eye exercises he could do to strengthen the weak muscles holding his eyeball in place. The eye is rotated in its socket thanks to 6 different muscles, and in his case, you can see how his right eye tracks, it keeps getting pulled to the right despite being made to focus on something more to the middle.
Tomorrow afternoon is the earliest we can attempt to return to the fancy optician shop we managed to find in Cascais. We weren't actively looking for a fancy place, it just seems that they only have that option here. So he will be rocking Ray Ban frames for his first ever pair of glasses, a ridiculous costing pair that we hope he will not break or lose anytime in the next few years! *eyeroll*
In the meantime we have managed to get the water pump replaced, we were having trouble with the water pump being able to move water round the boat, to taps and such...again, not a good problem to have. This has, for the most part, been fixed thanks to a brand new pump, one that Jeroen was cursing and sweating as he replaced and fixed it to the wall beneath the floor boards. We've also been able to put this cleaning agent into the water tanks, well, two of the three tanks, and empty the foul out...it was long overdue, no doubt, as our water was not smelling great at some point. Many of the marinas offer "fresh water" to refill tanks, but depending on the country, your quality of water is sometimes less than desired...again, a problem we can side step once we make our own water from desalination, at least our tanks would be protected from bacterial overgrowth.
The one beautiful plus of being in Cascais was the opportunity to go to the Mercado de Vila, a huge farmers market where fresh vegetables, fruit and plants could be bought for a very affordable price compared to supermarkets. The variety was also staggering. Many of the places we've been so far its not been as easy to find larger farmers markets, so prices have been bit more than normal and quality not always that great.
We am still in the process of learning what vegetables keep well and how to store veggies and fruit so we can extend the time we have before being forced to consume them. With a family of four, its not an easy task, although technically, I am guessing a couple would be limited on the variety of what they can buy as they have the opposite problem of not being able to consume as much fast enough.
Meh, grass being greener and all that.
Once we are done getting Micah's glasses tomorrow, we will push off yet again, this time for The Algarve. The Algarve is the southernmost region of of the Portuguese continent. It has an area of 4,997 km² with 451,006 permanent inhabitants, and incorporates 16 municipalities with its administrative centre in the city of Faro.
The thing that concerns us is that much like Cascais, the whole region may end up being fancy schmancy and full of tourists. It seems that Europe is wide open despite Covid-19 rates skyrocketing. What do you do though, right? Money makes the world go round. Even family in India are concerned as they go into yet another lockdown due to an uptick in infections. For the most part, we wear our masks even on the street, we don't dine inside restaurants unless that is the only option available, and we have been vaccinated, but that is still no guarantee we won't get sick.
Sasha and Micah suffered a bout of food poisoning after the last time we ate out, so we've been eating "at home" purely out of convenience more than concern for safety, although that certainly is worth a concern.
As we sailed from Porto to Cascais, we came across large swathes of Red Tide. Red tides are a phenomenon of discoloration of sea surface. It is a common name for harmful algal blooms occurring along coastal regions, which are resulted from large concentrations of aquatic microorganisms, such as protozoans and unicellular algae.
Lets just say we won't be touching any seafood anytime soon, we passed many nautical miles of red tide...many! Made for some beautiful photos...but yeah, sad to see. Sad to see that even dolphins were swimming through that shit, even though they were pretty smart about avoiding the bigger patches of it, but its like you or me, how do you avoid air pollution, right? Its fine if you can get yourself a fancy mask, but dolphins and other sea creatures don't have that option.
Dolphins! Wow, we saw so many dolphins, and so close too! It feels pretty magical to be able to see Dolphins up close, and not sure we will ever get tired of it.
Well, other than the first 24 hour non-stop sail we have done as a family, since our Skipper bid us adieu, we've also achieved one more first, the kids have learned to bicycle without training wheels! Well, it wasn't so much a learning experience as it was a matter of understanding and already possessing innate awareness about ones centre of gravity, and well, we thought they would need much hand holding (or more like bike holding) and knee scrape care...but they just hopped on their rental bikes and with some initial unsteadiness, just dashed off!
The experience of living on the boat is still quite new, but its slowly sinking in. For instance, the other day, after Micah & Sasha complained they were beginning to feel pukey just as we were waiting for a seat at some fancy Pizza place that we chose purely for them...I mean, it was late, past eight in the evening, and we had already waited nearly half an hour, we were all tired and fed up, and not entirely feeling happy with ourselves or each other, so we decided to avoid eating dinner altogether and just go back to the boat...which is when I heard myself saying, "never mind, lets just go home!"
The boat is home. It just felt weird saying, "Lets go home" in Cascais, Portugal.
No doubt...we will say, "Lets go home!" in Greece, Turkey, Croatia, Spain, Italy....hell...and one day even in Fiji!
Some days I feel at peace with the path we are on...and other days, I am riddled with anxiety, fearing we have made a mistake. Generally the only time I feel like we made a mistake is when shit isn't going well. When the water pump isn't working and washing the dishes or brushing teeth becomes a concern...or when drinking water becomes a concern and I am boiling pasta with bottled water. Yeah, its at those times that I feel anger and sadness mix together in my gut and I desperately want to be free of the fear.
When I am most at peace is when we are sailing. When we are surrounded by blue as far as the eye can see, when there is no land visible, when the only sound is the sound of the wind and the water...nothing can take away that feeling of pure Zen...except pulling into a Marina for a much welcome shower in a shitty shower space and being able to eat a meal cooked by and cleaned up by someone else!
Yeah...its all a bit love-hate at the moment...and a bit fear-zen....fight-flight...I guess. Its beautiful to know we are living off solar and wind generated energy, sometimes we are producing more dependable energy than the shore power made available to us in marinas! Now all we need is dependable water, which I hope and trust will be sorted in the next day or so after Jeroen hears back via email from the manufacturers of the water maker we own.
Mobile data usage has also been a concern. Sure, we are given 21GB of data for use within the EU, through our service provider. Stream a movie or two, upload a few dolphin videos, and download a show or two, and you will find you have used up your 21GB in 2 weeks! Yeah, so now we have learned about the wonderful world of data only e-sim set ups!
I just bought 50GB of data for USD100, with an allowance of 3 months in which to use it. I hope this should substitute well for my mobile carrier allowance of 21GB a month. Jeroen bought 100GB of data for USD185...with 6 months to use it in, and since the kids and I have all logged on to it, I am certain that 100GB is down by about 30% already. So lets see, its all an interesting learning experience, still, very cool to have these options.
Well, that is it for my weekly update. Will post again from The Algarve. Until then, be well, stay safe and wear your mask! ;)
Comments
Post a Comment