At 9.15pm on the night of the fifth day, having travelled 588 miles in five days and six hours, we arrived in Porto Santo, just north east of the main island of Madeira. Madeira was actually totally out of our way on the route from Gibraltar to the Canaries, but as we only intended to leave the Canaries at the end of December, we had the time to spare and I was dead keen to go there.
These islands are considered by some to be Plato’s lost continent of Atlantis and they have remained more or less unchanged since they were originally inhabited by the Portuguese in the 15th century. Then, in 1974, a revolution in Portugal brought independence and progress. The group is now an autonomous region of Portugal and, since 1986, a part of the European Union. Madeira is famous for its mild pleasant climate and the islands are covered with large forests and thick vegetation. It is from this that the islands get their name, Madeira, which means ‘wood’ in Portuguese. Madeira and Porto Santo are the only two inhabited islands. A delightful little island, Porto Santo is the second largest in the group but considerably smaller than the main island of Madeira.
The little harbour at Porto Santo
Nervous about arriving in a strange port so late at night, we had tried to radio the authorities, to no avail. We crept in carefully but found no harbour officials around to point us to the correct place to tie up. Luckily for us, a friendly Dutchman on another yacht helped us tie up on the end pontoon. This turned out to be the visitors’ pontoon but no one moved us so we just stayed there for the next four days. I left Mike standing around on the dock chatting to the few other yachties who had been awakened by our arrival. Men (sailors, that is,) can stand around on chilly docks in the middle of the night and talk about boats and things for absolutely hours. Beats me. I went below and wrote up our final log, which I’d forgotten to do in the excitement of land fall. Our position then was N33.03 and W16.19 so we had moved one time zone west of GMT and 7 degrees south of the Balearics. It was rather good fun to think of our longitudinal position in terms of time zones East or West and our latitude in terms of getting warmer and sunnier the lower we went, down to 0 degrees at the Equator.
I did a bit of tidying up and hung our bag of rubbish at the back of the boat. I was really proud that we had only this one small bag after five days and all it contained was the plastic non-biodegradable stuff. Everything else had been shredded (paper), crushed or filled with water (cans, tins, bottles) or left whole (vegetable matter) and thrown overboard on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, as cruisers we lived an incredibly green lifestyle. We sailed almost all the time so used very little fuel, we used solar panels for our power, were sparing with water and collected a lot of our own from rain and we sometimes even caught our own fish! And of course there are those who don’t even use deodorant! I definitely felt I was doing my bit for the global warming cause, although personally I’m a believer in the Gaia effect.
Gaia was the ancient Greek goddess of the earth, and the Gaia theory is that not only do living organisms help shape the environment, but environmental conditions also shape how life evolves over the long term. Thus life and the environment evolve together, as a coupled system, through geologic time and mother earth always heals herself no matter what changes are visited upon her, either by nature or by man. Since the beginning of time she has experienced enormous climatic, environmental and atmospheric changes, sometimes disastrously so, but conditions on earth continue to sustain life as we know it. Life evolves around the changes and the environment is in turn affected by the living organisms, the whole process the most amazingly delicate balancing act. (I filched that neat description off the internet.)
Because I believe this doesn’t mean I think we should all just bang on making a mess of things. It breaks my heart to see plastic bags, bottles and polystyrene cartons floating on the sea.
There was not much to be found in the little port of Porto Santo, so after an uncomplicated check-in with polite and courteous officials the next morning we took a 20 minute walk past the longest and most fabulous sandy beach I have seen in a long time (since Africa, in fact) into the town where we found internet cafes and a phone to call my sister Pairose who was, needless to say, extremely relieved to hear from me!
I did a bit of tidying up and hung our bag of rubbish at the back of the boat. I was really proud that we had only this one small bag after five days and all it contained was the plastic non-biodegradable stuff. Everything else had been shredded (paper), crushed or filled with water (cans, tins, bottles) or left whole (vegetable matter) and thrown overboard on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, as cruisers we lived an incredibly green lifestyle. We sailed almost all the time so used very little fuel, we used solar panels for our power, were sparing with water and collected a lot of our own from rain and we sometimes even caught our own fish! And of course there are those who don’t even use deodorant! I definitely felt I was doing my bit for the global warming cause, although personally I’m a believer in the Gaia effect.
Gaia was the ancient Greek goddess of the earth, and the Gaia theory is that not only do living organisms help shape the environment, but environmental conditions also shape how life evolves over the long term. Thus life and the environment evolve together, as a coupled system, through geologic time and mother earth always heals herself no matter what changes are visited upon her, either by nature or by man. Since the beginning of time she has experienced enormous climatic, environmental and atmospheric changes, sometimes disastrously so, but conditions on earth continue to sustain life as we know it. Life evolves around the changes and the environment is in turn affected by the living organisms, the whole process the most amazingly delicate balancing act. (I filched that neat description off the internet.)
Because I believe this doesn’t mean I think we should all just bang on making a mess of things. It breaks my heart to see plastic bags, bottles and polystyrene cartons floating on the sea.
There was not much to be found in the little port of Porto Santo, so after an uncomplicated check-in with polite and courteous officials the next morning we took a 20 minute walk past the longest and most fabulous sandy beach I have seen in a long time (since Africa, in fact) into the town where we found internet cafes and a phone to call my sister Pairose who was, needless to say, extremely relieved to hear from me!
At the top of the sea breaker to the port of Porto Santo there is a long wall on which sailors over the years have painted colourful graffiti pertaining to their yachts. There were some remarkable artistic efforts, some funny, some romantic and some rude.
Mike grabbed a pot of paint and painted one for us – it was such fun to see our names on a wall in this exotic place.
Our obliging Dutch neighbour, Minky, was good at electrics and he and Mike worked the next day on connecting the new solar panel to our batteries, which would hopefully improve our power capacity. We found good restaurants in the port, one of which let us have free ice every evening. We had given up on having a fridge by then and decided to try and get ice wherever we went. It was not a bad alternative and ideal with a gin and tonic!
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