LinoCat

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.