Category: sailing

We had read about the deserted island called Salvagem Grande and liked to stop there on our way from Madeira to Canary Islands.

160 Nm south of Madeira, it took us 24 hours to go there this time by engine with absolutely no wind and flat sea in full moon shine.

We saw a sea turtle and some dolphins on the way.

Salvagem Grande is an very isolated island outside of the normal sailing routes and Mon Ami was boat number 20 visiting the island this year the 26 June.

Salvagem is a nature reserve park and you need a license to visit. Its guarded by two policemen and two nature wardens and a mechanical engineer and a dog. These people alters every second week but the dog stays. The dogs name is Salvage and she has lived on the island for more than 12 years. In her hole life she has only left the Salvagem island ones for the dentist in Funchal.

The wardens and the policemen was very friendly and somewhat excited to get us as their first visitors after 14 days the first time on their shift.

Besides the guards, there is no people living on Salvagem. It’s some times visited by biologists who investigate the Cagarras birds in the island.

Now where 3 biologists on the island.

One of the nature wardens showed us around the island and we had a walk all the way up to the lighthouse that had guided us in the night sailing and was seen in 30 Nm distance.

The Cagarras Birds

We where told that Cagarras birds fights hard for a good place for their nests. After they are born on Salvagem they fly out for the sea and will come back on land for 5 years! They fly all the way down to South Africa and are monitored by a digital tracker that the biologists have ring-marked them with. After 5 years at sea

are they old enough to lay their first eggs and then they return to Salvagem and place their egg in the same nest as they was born! It’s amazing!

I was too ambitious when I tied down our new Highfield RIB dinghy on foredeck on Mon Ami.

My mistake was to use the rubber handles that are glued to the pontoons sides.

I tied quite hard down as we was sailing 3 days and nights from Lagos to Madeira. In Lagos it was a bit cold and the pontoons expanded when we reached the warmer weather and sunshine in Madeira. The pressure on the rubber handles became too strong and they both broke. I hope to be able to replace them.

We have a very nice Highfield RIB dinghy with double aluminum bottom. 20Hp Honda outboard engine with electric start and steering wheel. The problem is sometimes it becomes too heavy to drag up on a beach. We realize this now when we sail in waters with a 2 m tide water difference but we have been able to manage so far.

The last days in Madeira we went on a classic levada walk. Levada is the old channels build to transfer water in the mountains. They have inspection tracks next to them that have become very popular for tourist.

We had a local guide and we where 20 people in our group from all different nationalities.

It was spectacular views and easy walks next to a levada. When we transfer to another levada it could be long steps or even a 800 meter long tunnel.

The track we took was called the 25 Fountain after all the waterfalls. The biggest was 200 long.

We where on 1900 m altitude and the climate was a bit chilly and humid. Excellent for this type of forest and vegetation.

We can definitely recommend the levada walks on Madeira.

Fireworks!

In end of June is the Atlantic festival in Funchal. One of the activities is a fireworks competition each Saturday night. The winning team will get the honor for creating the fireworks for New Year. This seems to be a big thing in Madeira and the hotels are booked for New Year 12 months in advance.

We had a perfect spot to view the fireworks in Mon Ami cockpit.

It’s only 30 Nm distance from Porto Santos to the east edge of Madeira.

The sailing was tuff but nice with 4 m waves then the bottom raise from 3000m deep rapidly.

We couldn’t make any pre-reservation of berth in Funchal so we choose to go to the Hotel village in Quinta do Lorde. Quintadolorde.pt

Here came our children Sara and Oscar onboard with there boyfriend Björn and girlfriend Erika.

There’s flight where 24 hours delayed as the plane had to circulated over Madeira airport but not been able to land in the hard wind on one of the worlds shortest landing tracks. The plane with our children divided back to Lisbon and Louise and I found us eating dinner alone. Still happy that no accident occurred.

We hade a very nice but windy long walk the next day on the east peninsula of Madeira. We just walked out from the marina hotel and uphill a km where the track started. The nature was beautiful and dramatic!

After sailing almost exactly 3 Days and nights from Lagos in Portugal we finally arrived in the first smaller island in the Madeira archipelago, Porto Santo.

Porto Santo is a 6 x 11 km wide island and the nature is the opposite of the green mother island Madeira. Here is it hardly any threes or green nature everything is brown on this volcanic island.

We took a taxi around the island with a nice and friendly taxi driver who had lived here 65+ years and told us the story about the island. It was nice and the nature was more nice then expected.

We visited an old windmill where the taxi drivers father had worked.

It is an tradition that sailer paint their logo on the wall of the break water in Porto Santo.

Many famous sailers have been here before us and many of them from Sweden.

YouTube celebrities Johan and Malin from RAN Sailing. RANsailing.se

The one and only Sven Yrvind (80 year) who currently is sailing from Sweden to New Zealand in a tiny small boat. www.yrvind.com

Mats painted the Mon Ami sign on the wall of fame.

Next to Mon Ami on the jetty was the sailing vessel Patago from Alaska with a French sailor Alain Noyau who will attend the Longeroute with his boat Patago. Single handed nonstop around the world sailing competition. It takes approximately 9 months until he is back ashore again. 27 boats attend including Anders Eriksson with Malala from Ljungskile Sweden. 3 of the skippers are women.

longueroute2018.com