Gaby arrives on the 13th of June (just the day before departure) and we organize a nice dinner in a small place in Arrecife with Martin and Debby from Locomocean (they will sail to Caraibi).
Gaby looks tired and she has difficulties to switch off from the projects she is doing in Naples, also the first day of sailing is uncomfortable but then the atmosphere is so far away from the city chaos and the phone is not covered anymore so she start relaxing.
For us it has been a long stay in Canaries Islands and we loved them very much, it’s Carmine favorite place on Earth!!! I love Gomera, Carmine loves Las Palmas, we both enjoyed a lot Lanzarote, we just need to choose!
At 7:45am we pull up the anchor from Arrecife old port and sail to La Graziosa for a night stop, in the morning we set sail to Madeira, around 260 miles.
It is a three days-two nights nice passage with a beautiful full moon. Gaby does the day shifts and the sailing is very smooth. We pass close to Ilhas Desertas and we can see Madeira in the distance.
Unfortunately we have an old map of the marina Quinta de Lorde and entering we aspect to see the visitor pontoon on our right side, but it is not there, and with strong wind gusts me and Carmine look at each other thinking “… and now?” Eidos is quite large and maneuvering her in this small marina, with strong winds, is not something we like… Likely we see a small empty pontoon (it was under maintenance) and we decide to go upwind and let the wind push us against it… Phewwww!!! That was a quick decision and with the help of a couple of other sailors that took our lines from shore, it was done in very few minutes! The time I needed to slow done my heart bit was longer!!!
The rest of the month we spent in Madeira is quite, the marina is small but very well organized and the sea water (also in the marina) is absolutely transparent!!! There is also a pool by the sea from the hotel Quinta de Lorde that we can use.
We use buses to go to Funchal and rent a car to explore rest of the Island. Madeira is very green with high mountains in the middle, a small village with a lot of natural and manmade sea water pools called Porto Moniz, a fisherman village with so many little restaurant to try called Camara de Lobos. There are also a lot of track for hiking in the mountains and walks on the edge of the sea cliffs…
While Eidos is safe in the marina, I take my time to fly to Italy to visit my parents and later on Carmine goes few days to Delft to visit Milo. That is when we decided to change our plans and sail to North Europe instead of the warmer Med!!!
