A lost and found day today, this morning received text message from Alex to say she had lost her passport and was turning the house upside down trying to find it. Subsequent texts confirmed she was unsuccessful and so could not get her flight! We are disappointed because we were looking forward to sailing with Alex for a week but sad for Alex who has a complicated itinerary for the next 3 months outside of the UK which will be now subject to the vagaries of the ...

Set off from Lagos with our normal northerly wind and as soon as we out the sails up it switched to southerly and then to westerly. Stopped in Portimao to drop off Jim who is taking the car Sue hired back to the airport. Jim has been aboard for 3 weeks and I will miss his excellent company and sailing support. Having dropped Jim off we put the sails up and headed east to Albuferia. Initially we had 14 knots from the west but that soon built up to 20 Knots and I ...

Sue and Emma joined us and we went to Sue's favourite restaurant in the Algarve from the dinghy for lunch and afterwards decided to sail west again to Lagos. This is 8 miles west and we were close hauled with 20 knots of wind as we got closer the wind kept rising eventually we were in a near gale with the wind over 30 knots, not quite the leisurely sail I planned!

Sue and Emma arrived today so we sailed to Alvor but this anchorage proved too windy and shallow for us to stay overnight. The clues were the hundreds of kite surfers and the boat in front running aground. We went on to Portimao where we anchored in the bay.

The saga of the diesel continues. After having motored for several hours to get to Lagos from Lisbon, I decided to check the fuel filter again, it was not as clear as would be expected so took off the fuel tank inspection tank and noticed the bottom of the tank covered in thin brown slime. Decided the best thing to do was remove this slime, however the tank showed just over a quarter full and so the best option was to suck off from the bottom. The question is how...