After a month in Porto Santo we got ready to leave. Visited the marina office and paid 122 Euro, which is a very cheap rate. We wanted to spend the last day at anchor at the beach outside the port.
When trying to lift the anchor we discovered it had got tangled up in a nearby mooring and we had no luck trying to untangle it.
We had two neighbouring yachts, with Gio on catamaran Buzio One and Richardo on Catxito a Benetau 58. Both rushed to assistance. Richardo an experienced free diver and he managed to uncouple the mooring from the bottom slab. We then lifted the whole mooring and our anchor chain into our dinghy and got it all untangled. After we lowered the mooring again and Richardo went down 7m and connected the mooring back onbthe concrete slab.
We thanked them both our fullest, but they both said they saw it as a fun challenge and a welcome break for a quiet de at anchor. So we finally could lift our anchor and go outside to anchor at the beach. We both had a good swim and a good dinner before going to bed.
The next morning we set sail for Madeira. We had an email from QuintaDoLorde marina welcoming us the stay there a few days. We thanked them and later the same day we had an email from Funchal marina, saying they had a space for us, but we would have to raft up on the outside of other boats. We thanked them - no, first of all as rafting up is a hassle with ropes, fenders, risk of moves and difficult going ashore. In addition we have plans to visit there in april. Besides going to QuitaDoLorde was very nice as we had purchased a new propellor and a maintenance kit for our dinghy outboard. The Suzuki dealer wasn't far from there.
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| Quinta Do Lorde marina |
We arrived the marina in the afternoon. Its just 6 hours sail from Porto Santo. The marina and the area around is a tourist complex looking very nice, but they had gone bankrupt and there wasn't much activity there. But Captains bar had cold beer and we had a decent burger meal there.
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| Your's truely at the Captains bar |
Tomas from Suzuki came down to see us bringing the new propellor and the maintanance kit. Our old propellor was no use at the safety rubber had broken and it would only give us slow speed.
We had also discovered the battery for our shortwave radio had broke down. One of the cells was'nt working. We visited the local chandler - and what do you know - he had just got in 4 used AGM batteries. 3 of them were in perfectly good order. The 4th had a broken cell. The owner had decided to buy Lithiums. They were axactly the same physical size as the old one but 120Ah (even better then the old 100Ah one) I tested them both, and they both charged up to 13.8 VDC.
On our final day there we met Richardo and his family. They had come to the marina the day before.
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