Portimão

It's an unwritten rule that as soon as there are two boats sailing in the same direction, it is a rcae. Whether you have never seen the other boat before or you have become good friends along the way, the race is on. So far we have ha not been able to cross the finish line, aka the entrance of a port, before Beautje. On our way from Alvor to Portimao we would get another chance. Pretty soon we had to admit to ourselves that yet again we weren't going to beat them 😉 Therefore, all that remained was to enjoy the beautiful sail we had. The sun was out, we had between 12-18 knots of wind and our fishing lines were out, of course. Since the wind was coming right from Portimao we had to tack our way there. During one of the tacks, as we slowed down a bit, we caught not just one, not two but five mackerel at the same time! As we were reeling them in we unfortunately lost one of them. We didn't need to be sad for a long time because we were catching one mackerel after the other. It almost felt like we were working in a Ford factory. All in all we think we caught about 12 to 15 mackerels. Since we could pick our fish we ended up with 6 good size mackerels. We informed Beautje and Marloes, who was driving to Portimao, about our fresh dinner plans.

Once we were in the marina they claimed they didn't have a spot for us, only a 16m berth. Which would mean we would have to pay about three times our actual rate. We all saw a bunch of open berths, the marina claimed however that they were reserved for full year or winter contracts and that they could return any day. Sure... We never saw any of the spots filled during the three days we were there. Oh well. Bart used his blue eyes and his mom visiting us to ensure us a spot on the waiting pontoon where at least we only had to pay for our own size and no electricity since we had none. It wasn't how Bart envisioned hosting his mom, so it was a bit of a tough one to swallow, but we would have to do with it. We quickly made our way over to Marloes who had already spotted us from the pier, oops we had missed her, and was now waiting for us in one of the beach bars. Together we enjoyed an arrival borrel and some tapas before returning home to start the dinner preparations.

Together with Beautje we had a lovely evening and used Jamie Oliver's Italy book as inspiration for mackerel crudo (seared in lemon) and "mackerel in funny water". After a long day and a couple of gin & tonics we had an early night. One of the highlights of the Algarve is the Seven Hanging Valleys Trail. This trail takes you along some of the most beautiful cliffs and caves of the Algarve. Since we had Marloes' rental car, and what a car, she was upgraded to a Mercedes Benz 😎, we were able to drive to the most gorgeous part of the trail the next day. It was very fun to do this trail together with Marloes and spend some quality time, especially after not having seen each other for 5 months.

During the lunch Marloes initiated a very good and useful conversation about how to recognize, appreciate and communicate about each other's different cruising wishes and compromises we each make. We have agreed that as a team we are not ready yet to set on the adventure of crossing the Atlantic, even though individually in some aspects one of us might be more ready than the other and vice versa. For me, I have accepted that we are not crossing the Atlantic to Suriname and the Caribbean in my head, but not always in my heart. I sometimes get tempted to think what if... and feeling like we are missing out. Even though this feeling usually disappears rather quick, it is still there sometimes. It is not just me who needs to accept these feelings, but Bart as well. We made the decision to suspend our crossing together, but we had never really talked about it on this level before. Therefore, many thanks to Marloes!

Back home we played some games and had our last dinner together. Veeerry early in the morning our alarm and Marloes' went off, but since she had here earplugs in we had to wake her up to make sure she would get to the airport in time for her flight. Which luckily she did! We look back at a great time together where it feels like we did so many things that we were together for at least a week instead of only a couple of days.Les mer