LinoCat

What do you do the whole day long? Well for example filling up the gas tank for the Dinghy and take it to shopping in the village of Alvor. Then head back, have lunch and a nap for the little one. Meanwhile you swim around the boat and clean the area where the antifouling marine coating ends (thats the under water coating) and the white of the glassfibre of the boat starts. You use a sponge and swim around the boat and clean that. Ah yeah right, a catamaran has 4 sides :-( All together we have around 50m of cleaning area, where you scrub with one hand and swim with the other. After you are done with that, its time for some free diving, but only half a meter deep to the saildrives and propellers. Even though LinoCat has been in the water only around 5 weeks, there is significant growth on the saildrive shafts and so it took me maybe 20 dives to scrub it off. Then a little bit of more swimming and splashing with the little one. In the bay of Alvor our thermometer showed 28 Celcius. NICE!...

An anchorage is something else than a marina. First it is free of cost. Second, you have a lot more freedom since normaly other boats are further away. You look for a spot with sand ground and then you drop the anchor. Usually depth is around 2-5m and then you let 15-30m chain out depending on wind, current and if you have the space to do that. If you let out 100m in theory your boat need 100m free space around the anchor. When at anchor we can be loud, play music and so on. Lani also enjoys the freedom. If the water is clean we can also run the watermaker. Here it shows that 28 Liter of drinkable freshwater are produced per hour. That is how Linocat looks at this anchorage. We will use the dinghy to drive to the old village for dinner :-) Then a ride back home to our boat in the dark. If this is my last blog entry, we have not found the boat.

After having been in Portimao a few days (4 to be precise) . Yesterday evening Liz and John from Scotland had a drink on our boat and we were chatting until 23.30. They also have a blog for their trip. The boat is called Jalan-Jalan and their webadress is: http://www.jalan-jalan.org.uk Linocat is now on the way to Alvor. Alvor is very close to Portimao just that it used to be a small fishing village and there is no marina. So you have to anchor there and use the dhingy (the inflatable boat) to reach the village. Lets hope that the anchorage is not to crowded. I do not know if we will have internet or mobile phone connectivity. Today the wind is almost gone and we are currently drifting at 0,5knots. The sails are down and we might go for a swim. The water is dark blue and 25 Celcius and air temperature is around 30. Weatherforecast is the same for tomorrow so there will be not much of sailing but rather sunbathing, chilling and eating. Well, we are extremly good at that! The watermaker ...

Today my parents promised me my first ice cream. But then! Look at that. Somebody wants to steal some from me. It was Cornetto Vanilla Chocolate by the way. That stuff is seriously good but very sticky I am laughing because it was fun! I want an ice cream every day from now on! Damned, this thing gets smaller and smaller and more sticky the slower i eat. Then its running over my fingers, and shirt and shoes and not only over my stuff! Almost nothing left! And that in 5 minutes! I WANT ANOTHER ONE! EVERY DAY!

Nice scenery??? Could be Miami? Enjoying a coffee break Couple, boat and old castle Sailing school. Should we join? Leftover from the AUDI med cup

34 Celcius at 18:00 in the evening when you come from the shopping center packed with heavy things. PHEW! Who said that India was hot? When ordering the boat i really thought about the fans in the cabin and in the salon but now i am happy to have them. But who needs a diesel driven heater? Well early in the morning it has also been running in August :-) We are wimps!

When sailing in good wind i sometimes get this "hunting fever" when i see other boats. Ok, Linocat is a cruising boat, overloeaded and no big sail area but it is nice to try to catch others. This was a bit bigger monohull and i could overtake her. Of course, if not, i would haveNOT posted this here :-)

We met many new people so far. There is Mike, who lives here on a boat and says "i feel like the marina is mine" and so he feels responsible that things are nice and clean and he is the helping hand for many sailors and a nice guy, probably around 40. Then we met the crew of the Vanora, a Lagoon 420 catamaran from Stuttgart. The couple has been working in Stuttgarts night life for the last decades and are now up to new adventures. There is Brigitte and Uwe on thei steel boat Momo and they will also go over the atlantic. The we met 2 boats with dutch people, one has 3 kids on board and they will also cross the atlantic. In general the atmosphere is always relaxed and everyone is up for a chat. Thats very nice and it is also great to get to knoe people which you will meet again from time to time at some of the anchorages. We have been to Lagos and had great food in the Taberna de Lagos and yesterday we sailed from Lagos to Portimao in strong winds and we also went into our box...

We left Vilamoura at 6.45 without Eric, Jannic and Sarah. They have been picked up by a shuttle and their plane leaves at 9.15 to Germany. The sunrise was nice even over such an ugly skyline as Vilamoura. Followed by a good breakfast we had a pleasent trip and the wind was nice but no luck with the fishing today. When we passed Portimao we could see the Audi Med Cup regatta still going on and around 16.00 we reached Lagos. Lani wanted to have a "swim" and so we inflated the "pool" and filled it with water. She had a great splash and then we walked to the supermarket. Since this is not Germany, of course the supermarked was open at 18.20 on a Sunday. See a happy Lani:

Hi, some people asked me what the daily routine is looking like. Today for example we got up at 8 (after a good 9 hours sleep) and i walked to the bakery to get some breadrolls. Then we had breakfast for about an hour. Afterwards i used the bicycle to try to find some CAT5 network cable to rewire the Battery meter on Linocat but was unsuccesful. I saw a HUUUGE sign which says "Super" from a distance but when reaching there it was a Super-Mini-Golf. GREAT :-( The i inflated the tyres a bit more (to 5bar) on the bike and went to a chandlery to get new line to replace the line of a fender which has been worn out. Back on the boat i replaced the line and then installed and repaired our Canon iP90 Colorjet Printer. This is a very small but neat printer and it did not pull the paper in. A small plastic part was dislocated and so i moved it back into place. Then downloading the drivers from the internet and installing them to print out the shuttle transfer and flight vouchers for ou...

The Spinaker is a sail that you use when the wind comes from behind. It is usually bigger than the normal sail area. Usually we our normal sails we have 79square meters and with the spinaker we have 105 square meters. It a very comfortable cruise and since you are then going with the wind which comes from behind you have almost no apparent wind on the boat. For example the wind comes with 8knots from behind and you drive 7knots, then you only have around 1knot of wind that you feel on the boat. So it is a smooth ride and usually also quite fast. Our sail is called a Parasailor from the german company ISTEC. Its not cheap but with the opening it is very robust and can vent the pressure also through the opening. The comapny says that due to the wing in the opening the sail would also create some uplift force but i could never feel this. But it is a great sail which we also used for our Biscaya crossing 2 years ago. We had it up for almost 3days and nights in a row.

Of course we are dragging a lure behind. And today at 4knots in 67m depth suddenly there the was the sound of the line getting pulled from the reel. This happens often but usually it is just some seaweed that is caught with the line. There was no significant pull and so i realled it in with disappointment. When i saw the shimmering silver reflection of a fish under the surface i was amazed. We killed him quickly and Chris cleaned the fish and then he landed in the fridge. Either today or tomorrow he will end up in the pan. That was the first fish this season. That was important since it gave me also reassurance that the lure, line and reel are a good combination.

We almost had 2 tragic losses today. One was one of my clark shoes which was kicked over board during a sail maneuver. We had all sails up and so i pressed the MOB button on the chart plotter, we got the sails down, started the engine and turned around. 15 Minutes later we really found the shoe. BUT THEN: a bikini top was missing and so we searched again and found it. This was a good test and really fun too. After that we had a nice swim and a good sail. We cam back to Portimao and were lucky to get a berth since there is the Audi med cup regatta going on.

Vilamoura is expensive and very touristic. The berth they assigned to LinoCat was right between motorboats but thats OK. We went out for dinner since it was Yannic´s birthday and had good food at a local restaurant. I had a mixed meat kebab and a mixed salad. Price was typical for Vilamoura:High. The local shipchandlery is good and i got once more another adapter since they use a different one here than in Lagos or Portimao and i could not fine this specific one. I am sure somewhere on the boat i have one for this socket since i have been in Vilamoura a few times. Today we decided to stay in the marina, taking care about housework on the boat, shop for food, splash around with little Lani and just relax. Dinner will be on board with Spaghetti and spinachsauce and salad, followed by some drinks maybe and a few round of card games.

Yes, Jannic turned 20 today and so we had a breakfast with a nice chocolate cake and candles on the way out from Lagos. There was not enough wind and so we brought the sails down again after a while and went for a swim. We set course to Vilamoura since the young ones wanted to got out to a discotheque to celebrate Jannics birthday. We all had a lot of sun today and so we needed some more swimbreaks and also some rest.

Hi, we have just reached Lagos at the Algarve coast. It is amazing how empty the marina is for the high season. When asking for the price we knew why, They still charge a lot and catamarans are 100% extra. This is a bit oldfashioned and we plan to stay only for 2 days. We went to a restaurant in the old part of the city and it was expensinve and not very good. So tonight we will cook on the boat again. Cost for a berth here are 36EUR per night plus another 100% for the catamaran. Then add 20% tax ann you get the full amount.

Tough because some got seasick despite the lack of waves. So we had a good reason for sunbathing, swimming, eating and relaxing.

We are reflecting a lot about what does life mean. Here it means beeing self driven, self responsible, have fun and enjoy every minute. Check out our reflecting thoughts in the sunglasses of Jannic :-)