After I pulled up the anchor in Sagres and sailed away, my goal was to get to Faro. It was a straight sail with little or no incidents, but it was a reasonably long sail, thankfully the wind was with me this time, and as I approached the breakwater marking the entrance to the channel to Faro the wind was rather strong. I had to put a reef in earlier, as the wind was making Away heel a little too much. Reefing when the wind comes from behind is not that easy, I found out. But with some persuasion I got the reef in and it was needed, as the winds was hovering just below 30 knots. As I approached the rather narrow entrance I furled in the headsail and did an almost 180 degrees turn to be able to drop the main sail. It is always a bit hectic in strong winds, combined with two to three meter swell, but eventually it was all down and I could turn her around again and motor into the channel.

It seemed to be a place where the local people went to have a day at the beach and partying. There was even a restaurant at the entrance of the canal, even if there wasn’t much other buildings in the vicinity. For some reason people seemed to beach their boats on shore in the tide. I guess they wanted to walk to the beach without getting wet?

There were a few boats already anchored, so I picked a spot that was reasonably far away from all of the others. The wind was still crazy, and there was ribbs and other boats coming and going all the time. I managed to put my boat where most of them was passing through, but hey, it was the only open spot left! I gathered the headsail and tuck it in in the sail bag, made all the arrangements to avoid slapping halyards and went below to make some food. While it was cooking I had a beautiful, but windy, sunset right in front of the boat.

It was a good day.