Sailing from Culatra to Ayamonte. Of Portugal we go, and Spain were we go!

 Small trip to Ayamonte, but our first (of more to come) dangerous mistakes!

So we wanted to go and stop on the frontier between Portugal and Spain, we needed to buy a Spanish SIM card for de internet and we wanted to say hello to Soraia's mother that live in Ayamonte, and buy some stuff from the nautic store there.

The store name is Ayamar, have a many things and good prices.

And of course we wanted to start our food and drinks journey.

TAPAS AND CANÃS!!!

So, and this is important, let me explain for those who don't know what are tapas.

TAPAS are small dish's that cost around 3 or 3,5€ depending of the place, and they can be so many different things. Like small "tortilha" (eggs batatos and onion), "Croquetas" small fried pasta with meat, Small salades and more, much more.

And canã is beer, simple as that.

So we arrive at  Ayamonte and we anchor on the river, and that was our big mistake, let me explain why...

First we knew that bad weather was coming , but we also knew that will be more severe the next day, when we plan to be on the marina. 

And that was our first mistake, because bad weather before even worst weather, normally means that the weather will be already very bad and the forecast is not perfectlyyyy right. HAHAHA

So we anchor and we draft 90m, we didn't sleep nothing because of anchor alarm going off all night, and all the things that was going on. 

We didn't use a rope between the chain and the boat to realease tension.

Over all, was a mess 😮‍💨

The next day we went to the Marina, and a leave you with the video of that.

After that we meet with Soraia's mother and we go out to enjoy the city.

See you on the next Stop, fair winds!

Sailing from Portimão to Culatra. First trip with no return!

First trip with no return. We are far from were its starts, far from the day we thought about "lets take boat lessons and learn how to sail, just for fun"  so now is the time, now, we are really doing it. Two years had pass since the first though, sometimes it look just as "an ideia" other times we were really focus on the project. But  time passed and step by step, we sold everything and the strings to land, confort and security start to be less and less. So, we are here, and despite of all the days we did sailing, this will be the first trip with no return. Our hearts were beating fast, not because is a difficult trip, but because the journey had started, and we set sail to culatra... 

So let me tell you a little bit about Culatra.

Culatra is a little fishing town sitting an a little island near Faro, South of Portugal.

It has a great and big anchorage area, a pontoon for the dingy, some restaurants/bars and a small market. Is peaceful and safe. 

First of all let me tell you about the sunsets and sunrises on this place, they are (see for yourself):

 And the town is very nice with a lot of personality, i will leave you with a post i did about culatra on instagram 

Instagram post to Culatra

After all the efforts and "Ups and downs", we were there. At the time, in that present moment it felt like a bird getting out of the egg shell. A new and exiting world was present in front of us, we didn't know what the future would bring, we didn't know how big the challenge wold be,  but we knew that for the first time we were really alive. 

So the adventure started! Boat Repairs and Installations.

 After 10 months stop in Portimão marina, we are finally on the move 👏👏

But before I tell you guys all about the travel part, let me explain why we were stop on Portimão Marina.

So before buying the boat we did a survey on it.

 After that we got busy with the boat preparations and Repairs, Let me share that!

From small esthetic repairs: 

    

The white was coming out and I recreated the button.

Rebuilt all the teak repairing the isolation an give a total clean and teak oil

Repair the inside flor. Took the old varnish and apply a new better one.

-Net around the boat.

-Repaint anchor chain.

-Change the anchor to a Delta (one size bigger than our boat)

-Change the mattress to a spring good one.

-Change the taps to low consumption ones.

-Fix the old fridge and install a Freezer

 

-Install a washing machine.

-Change All the batteries and house batteries to lithium

-Install two new bifacial LG 900W solar panels 

and 10 months had passed. But we also meet a lot of friend in the marina and we had a good time there.

Next I will start to tell you about the trip, if you have any questions about any of the repairs or installations, feel free to leave a comment, I have everything in video and I can tell you guys all about it.

Fair winds and see you around.