Some Info to Levadas: https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6230/ und https://walkmeguide.com/de/what-is-a-levada/
Levadas are artificial watercourses used for irrigation, some of which were built as early as the 15th century. You can walk along these watercourses. The paths are sometimes very narrow, but the Levada do Furado is secured with handrails throughout.
We had left Funchal by bus at 10 am and one was supposed to return at 1:15 pm or 6 pm in the evening. For the 1pm one we would have had to turn back quite quickly on the way and for the 6pm one we would have had to walk all the way back? Neither sounded good, so we just kept walking, hoping to find a solution at the other end.
At the other end of the path, a bus passed us just before we reached the road. But there were taxis that could take us back to Funchal. The last stretch was a tough one, because it involved the most metres in altitude, and that’s when our knee joints started to make themselves felt. Running 12 km is the limit with our sea legs. We dragged ourselves out of the taxi with the last of our strength to the restaurant street. Not all restaurants are open in the afternoon, so we tried a new one. There you sit in a nice courtyard. The food is good but nothing special.
At the end of August, we went to the Marina Quinta do Lorde and left our boat there for 5 weeks. It was time for a working holiday in Germany again.
In Hamburg, we had to babysit the cats and fight with them for a spot on the sofa.
We had another Covid vaccination, but also picked up a real infection with the virus at the doctor’s appointment. This meant that we were stressing our immune system with vaccination and virus at the same time (in my case also with flu vaccination on top). This put us out of action for a while. It is always dangerous to go ashore.
When we arrived back in Madeira, we were pleased to see that our plants had survived the time well. Mathias had placed an extra water tank next to each plant container and connected it with hoses.
When parking in the marina, we had made the mistake of not following the original manoeuvre plan, but listened to the marina staff’s help instructions. This is not necessarily a good idea with a boat like ours. The SAN is too light and has a large windage area, plus our bow thruster is out of action at the moment. This combination caused us to scrape along an unprotected rim around a bollard at the aft corner of the starboard hull.
Now Mathias has to carry out another repair here. Uncalled-for work and we were particularly annoyed with ourselves.
We were anchored again near Funchal and waited for a weather window to sail towards mainland Portugal. The time was used to install the various spare parts we brought from Germany. Some of the 3D self-printed small parts have already been installed.
New action to tighten the rope that attaches the mainsail to the boom.
Instead of a suitable weather window to continue our trip, several storm centres were announced to sweep over the island. Therefore, we fled to the Baia d’Abra. How we fared there, I will report in the next post….
