We arrived in Porto Santo this morning having left  Figueira da Foz on Monday evening, logged over 600 nm though  the direct route without wandering all over the ocean looking for wind would be about 550 mm.  We “saw” one yacht and some fishing boats on the AIS the first night but after that only saw a few tankers. Have to remember when looking at the CPA for these things that they are over 100m long!  Most of the time there was just us and the blue blue sea and the sky.

Of course having waited a week to get the echo sounder fixed, we immediately set off offshore soon getting into much deeper water than it can read.  One whole day was a complete calm, sunny and beautiful with a very slight swell.  We motored for 12 hours and started to worry whether we had enough fuel to motor all the way here, then spent some hours going 1 to 2 knots playing with the cruising chute before the wind filled in.  Luckily we had plenty of food and water! It was good when the island and its lighthouse appeared on cue on Saturday night.

We saw 2 sperm whales close to the boat, amazing, also a turtle.  Several lots of Dolphins came to play.  At night it took me a while to realise they were there in the dark.  Eventually realised the boat did not have its own set of splashy waves (or rather it did due to the Dolphins) and the odd snorts and snuffles were Dolphins and not Steve snoring.