So we're currently here early in the morning....

.... because it looks like this outside and Calypso is being hammered against the pontoon. After a great night playing pool at the local, the wind started in the early hours and doesn't look like letting up for the day.

We have every fender out and anything flappable on deck tucked away - it's still more comfortable sitting in Luis' cafe than being on the boat.

Still, this is the first day we've had poor weather - the past week has been mild and sunny with virtually zero wind. It's almost December after all, so I'm not surprised things are getting a bit ugly out there.

A lot of progress this week on extending the aft deck boxes as we're still waiting for our backstay components to arrive from the UK. There's still a few other jobs to do as well (winch bases being re-made, shortening a steering column, etc) but we should be good to get out of Nazare at the end of the month (IF the parts arrive this week)....

Sunnier update to follow.

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So today we took a day off boat work and headed up to northern Nazare to watch the swell roll in. Nazare's known for it's BIG winter swell courtesy of the undersea canyon and today didn't disappoint.

The view was excellent from up on the cliffs and we settled in for a couple of hours in the sun.

 

 
And the swell just kept on coming....

After all that fun, we wandered around Sitio (a neighbourhood on top of the cliff) before heading back down the funicular railway into town.

Tomorrow heralds another day of boat work - we visited a scrap yard today to get some steel for moving the winches to the aft deck, running up a total bill of 3,60 EUR. Given the same steel would have cost us 60GBP, we've pretty much paid for tonight's beers.... We also have to tweak the new rigging slightly, finish off reefing lines and joy oh joy, move the wind gen 2m further up the mizzen mast so it doesn't foul the mainsail - basically, we'll be here another couple of weeks. With the temps hovering in the mid-20's and our weekly grocery bill struggling to break the 40EUR mark, we're not exactly in a rush...

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So another update after last week's sneak peak of the new mast. It's been quite busy around here in Nazare.

Prepping the mast to be raised was no small undertaking - we had to strip the old mast, add all those fittings (plus wiring and halyards) to the new mast, then join them together....

Once that was all done, we raised the mast on the boat, measured and cut the remaining rigging, dropped the mast, fit the new rigging, then raised it again. It was on the second occasion we almost lost our new mast - I'm not kidding, we were about 2 minutes away from it coming crashing down.

I owe a HUGE thanks to Olly from Mars (who sadly departed this morning for Madeira with his lovely wife Issy) who helped us salvage the situation - basically, a line that was meant to stop any tangles in the rigging, caused one almighty tangle that meant we could only connect the bare minimum of wires. The tide was dropping which meant we were running out of time to get the job done, and I was at a loss as to how to get more lines connected to secure the mast (at least in the interim until we could free the tangled line). In the end, the only solution was for me to quickly climb the mast without a harness. I was 11m up the mast freeing that line when the crane operator advised us the lifting hook had come loose - had Olly not had the foresight to connect a fore and aft line *just in case*, quite simply we would have lost the mast, and I would've been thrown either into the harbour or onto the pier. It really was that close, and we were very thankful to have someone so experienced helping us set the mast.

After that fun, Lauren and I had a very quiet day, absorbing what had almost happened and getting the remaining rigging connected so as to get the mast as secure as possible.

The rest of the week was slightly less eventful, getting the mast ready for test sailing and also taking care of chores.... we've had some great weather recently, so time to catch up on washing.

There was also a beach BBQ as the weather is still hovering around the mid 20's (C).

Last up, a friend of ours was sailing from Falmouth to La Coruna, a distance of about 550 miles. This trip would normally only take 5 days and we were getting concerned by day 7 that something had happened, so notified the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC). To their credit, they kept us regularly updated and our friend was located just north of La Coruna, 10 days after setting off. It sounds like he's got some damage and the weather held him up a bit, but we're very fortunate as sailors to have as great a service as the MRCC. I'm sure there'll be beers and tales to tell when he makes it down to Nazare.

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It's been a pretty busy week back here in Nazare... after fitting the new props, we cracked on with setting up the rigging for the new mast. We've gone with sta-lok lower fittings so we can fit them ourselves rather than waiting a week or so for a rigger to make up all the fittings.

We then went back in the water this past Tuesday (Monday was a washout) and temporarily erected the rig so we could measure up the remaining rigging. Here's a sneak peek....

If the wind drops down today, we'll drop the rig again, fit the head sail furling gear then we can spend the next few days fitting the new boom, rigging up all the lines, fitting the sails, etc etc. In between all that, it's been great to catch up with friends at the marina and await the return of big swell...

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