The closure of the marina and harbour of Sines forced a change to the rally programme, the authorities would not even allow the rally to anchor in the port. Some boats stopped overnight at Sines anyway or at other anchorages.

We elected to sail the 125 miles overnight – major worries were the fishing buoys lying in wait to snare the unwary and the possibility of attacks by Orcas. This still seems almost unbelievable and very sad, but since 2020 there have been an increasing number of interactions between yachts sailing around the Iberian Peninsula and a group of Orcas that inhabit these waters. The Orcas group together to barge and attack the steering gear of the yachts, in some cases simply biting off the rudder! Many yachts have been disabled with wrecked steering gear and a few have sunk. Of course large numbers have also moved safely through the area. The reports so far this year had them around the Gibraltar Strait. They follow the Tuna and just before we set off they seemed to be moving west with sightings in the Algarve and off Cape St Vincent. Wind came up and we were bowling along merrily reefed and wing and wing (Timshel sails very well like this) when we got reports on the WhatsApp from Assifa who had just had an Orca attack – luckily no serious immediate damage to boat or people. Their position was right on our route and everyone headed further onshore to avoid it. Silly in a way as the Orcas were unlikely to have stayed in the same place, but apparently they don’t like shallow water so much and it is recommended to stay within the 20m contour – difficult under sail along a rocky coast. Wind died during the night and others motored past – at one point 6 rally yachts on AIS all close in the darkness. We sailed very slowly downwind inshore. We heard of 2 further attacks taking place near to Sines; some of our rally friends were close by having just left there. Very lively conditions of wind and swell at Cape St Vincent had us hurriedly reefing down before gybing. After that we sailed east as close inshore as the fishing gear allowed – maybe we should have gone inside it all as we saw one yacht doing. We had our Orca defences ready in the cockpit, sand (to confuse their echolocation) metal pipes etc to make noise, knowing about the attacks on A’assifa and others so close made it all very real. The wind died completely just before we got to Lagos so we motored in the sunshine feeling lucky to have arrived unscathed. We admired the amazing caves, grottoes and towers of coloured sandstone. Dolphins playing had attracted a whole flock of tripper boats, we just wanted to past out of the way into the harbour. Lovely to be met by our yellow shirts Bev and Alvaro yet again. We were pretty tired – overnight passages are the worst especially inshore as you don’t get a chance to get into the watch system and don’t know how many times we gybed, but it was great later on to see the last rally boats safe in port.

At the dinner on Wednesday we were surprised to receive two prizes – one I think for least motoring hours (28 mins) the last leg (stubbornness again) and the other, a nice Portuguese pottery dish awarded for berthing really really slowly. Almost everyone got an award.

Can’t believe this is the finish, the trip seems to have gone by so fast and will be so sad to say goodbye to our rally friends.