On the road again

17:00 UTC 16/08/07 31'55.5N 17'00.4W

We left Funchal as planned, at 10am this morning, after chivvying ourselves through the pre-departure tasks and getting away easily from the marina. In the lee of the island, there was little wind but a good force 5 was blowing outside, so we unfurled the jib and romped away.

Funny how back in England, a 250 mile, two day passage is a big deal and we'd spend a lot of time planning for that. Now, it seems like a little nip across the bay after the past 10 days, 1100 miles we've just done. I have to remind myself, and the crew, that it's still a serious passage and the same checks and routines apply.

The equipment needs a similar reminder. After 9 months of faultless operation, the Raymarine plotter / radar has got into a loop where it starts up, stops and reboots before we can do anything. Not great to be without it, but we have a couple of backup GPS units, a chart plotter on the PC and the paper charts, so not a big problem. The radar will be missed on the night watch, but with so little shipping and good visibility, it's an inconvenience not a risk. I managed to call the agent in the UK before we were out of mobile phone range so hopefully there might be some suggestions (other than 'send it back to us') waiting on my email when I call in in a few minutes.

I don't know if it's the humidity, the fact we've been in port, the overcast day, but something is making us all feel a bit lethargic and quiet. This is good, fast, easy sailing yet it's hard to enjoy it as much as we should. Tomorrow will doubtless be different in some way or other.

We had a fabulous meal last night, in an old fort on the Madeira seafront. Having walked past a lot of cheap bars (plastic tablecloths - not good) we decided to go a little up-market and this place was really smart. The food was excellent - Owen and I shared a big fish platter with prawns, mussels, clams, cod, salmon and other stuff - more than we could eat. A couple of bottles of very nice wine, complimentary cava, very nice dessert and all for about 30 quid each. As we remarked, we felt like grown-ups for a change, rather than the slightly overgrown students that we still tend to see ourselves as for much of the time.

In less than 40 hours, we should be in Santa Cruz de La Palma, and the island has the largest volcanic crater on Earth, apparently, so we'd like to get inland and see that on Saturday before heading south towards Tenerife and a rendevouz with the family for the next stage of this adventure.

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