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Hi Folks
We have made it to La Coruna by using up a lot of diesel! Our trip north has been beset by Northerlies and now that we want to go North Easterly to Belle Ille, we have a week of strong NE forecast.... go figure! We left Denia some time ago and had some rough seas around the various headlands we had toget round. Gibralter was fun for a few days and we even made it up the rock this time to see the mad monkeys - vicious lot they are too! We watched one big ape try to bite a guy's thigh as he walked past him and another 60 lb ape jumped on a guy's shoulders to try and raid his rucksack! The baby ones were really cute though.
After Gibraltar we anchored in the laggon at Olhao, near Faro then motored along to Portimao and the n the expensive marina at Lagos. We have been trying to do this trip in long legs of 160 miles at a time to avoid expensive marinas and to eat up the miles, but the weather has rarely been in our favour with mainly light or adverse winds. We expected to motor up the Portuguese coast as we knew the northerly trade winds would have set in for July and it was exactly so. We had a lovely week in Sines, where we met Paul and Marianne of Silver - sensibly heading south! Not surprisingly for every boat coming North there are about 20 heading south - but maybe thats a factor of the time of year as people recommend coming up the Portuguese coast before the July trades set in.
We made quite a few marinas and anchorage stops up the Portuguese coast and overall progress was quite slow, but uneventful.
La Coruna is currently 16 degrees cold, windy, wet and foggy... August it is not! Our plans are to cross over Biscay from here to Belle Ille and hopefully enjoy a few weeks cruising the Brittany coast, but for the moment we are stuck here with strong NE winds, and a big swell, luckily its not expensive here, and its a nice place to be stuck!
I guess its safe to say we are looking forward to getting home - hopefully sometime in September and giving the diesel engine a rest!!
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