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year (2004), and covers some time in May and June when Beate and Harald were
preparing TANIWANI and sailed from almost home port Lagos to Puerto Sherry near
Cadiz.
This season has started
slowly  in
late May, when TANIWANI was hauled out at the SOPROMAR yard in Lagos for a fresh coat
of International Optima underwater paint. We had this paint for the last two
seasons and it performed very good in the waters between Canary Islands and
Portugal. Except for the prop there was no fouling if we wouldn't plan to go far
and into tropical waters, it would have worked just fine for another year.
Now, with two additional
coats we hope it will last fine through the South Pacific, but one never really
knows. Many people have told us that most of the paints that work fine in
European and US waters fail very quickly in the tropics. Seems we will have to
find out.
 The
SOPROMAR yard can only be highly recommended, especially the excellent mechanic
with his well equipped machine shop. For us he made a nice stainless steel mast
for the wind generator and, more important, milled our non matching halves of
the lower rudder shaft bearing. A problem that had lead to quick wear of the
Delrin packing and enough play in the alignment, that the lip-seals on top
allowed substantial amounts of water into the boat.  Now we have a well repaired
bearing, new lip-seals and a rubber gaiter; the later two courtesy of Najad.
While
still in Lagos, numerous other little tasks and enhancements were done. Harald
spent a day in the rigging, washing the mast, cleaning and checking all
terminals. The only small defect we found was a smashed halyard sheave of the Genoa, which was quickly sent to us from Selden in Sweden. Another notable new
thing was the addition of a gimbaled bracket for our radar.
Only a few days before we
were to finally leave Lagos, a
well known sister ship, the "Altarial" came into the marina. 
Altarial was
Najad's demo boat that we had looked at many times in Sweden and in Düsseldorf,
she was bought by Chris and Faith Mortimer, sailed to the Caribbean and now
returned to Lagos via the Azores. We met the very nice Mortimers for the first time
and had a great exchange of experiences.
Lagos has been Taniwani's
home port for two years and we really liked it as a save and nice place. So we
were a little bit sad to leave it behind for many years when we finally left
there on June 7th. But we didn't sail far on that day and anchored for the night
at Portimao, less than 10 miles away.
 The
next day brought us to the lagoon of Faro and Olhao, where we anchored at the
well known place behind the island of Culhatra.  The
anchorage is very popular and many of the boats seem to hang out there for a
long time, moving between Olhao and the anchorage at best. We just spent three
nights in that area and really enjoyed the fantastic food market in Olhao. But
the highlight was rescuing a drunk water-bike driver who had sucked his painter
into the jet-drive. He needed a tow to a yacht appropriately named
"Bacardi" where he was greeted by an equally spirited crew.
When we eventually left
the big lagoon of Faro/Olhao, we spotted a huge motor yacht, more like a smaller
passenger ship anchored outside. What looked odd from the far, was that a
sailboat like mast was sticking out from it into the air. It took some time for
us to realize that it had two smaller yachts, a sailing yacht and a motor yacht
stored on deck, together with special cranes for launching them.
As always the internet
revealed the mystery: It was one, (but not the largest), of Paul Allen's boats
and just the little sailing yacht on deck was 72 ft !! A windsurfer on our deck
would have approximately similar proportions....
 Next
and last stop in Portugal was Tavira. Like most anchorages on this coast it is
situated at a river entrance. We didn't go very far inside, as it shoals quickly
towards the town, and the alternate arm behind the lagoon was densely populated
with a large field of local boats on moorings. But right behind the entrance,
where the waterway forks left and right is a neat little basin with a fantastic
view at all the activities. 
There may be space for
three boats to anchor, but we were the only one aside of numerous little day
fishing boats. We anchored smack in the middle of the basin, and for a moment
considered using bow and stern anchor to use up less room, but when we found
that the stern anchor windlass didn't work, we happily decided to stick to just
the big bow anchor. We liked Tavira and especially the first row view onto all
the local tourist fun and the busy old ferry to the sand dune.
So we spent an extra day
in Tavira before we moved on to the Rio Guardiana, that separates Portugal and
Spain, and there we anchored a bit upriver from Ayamonte.  The
beautiful highway bridge is too low for us to go further. We measured 21.5
meters at fairly low water using the sextant and the radar. Anyway, we also were
attacked by really fierce mosquitoes, so that we quickly left the river the next
morning.
Now we moved on to the
beautiful El Rompido, where Harald had already been three times with varying
crew. But it was new for Beate and when she heard last years story, when we were
anchored very close to the sand dune between two anchors and the tide kept
falling and falling until we could see the ground just a few meters from the
boat, panicked and jammed the anchor windlass with the bridle that worked itself
into the chain channel. The result then was hard work to free up the windlass,
but still no grounding until the tide started raising again. 
This time we anchored
further off, but when we sounded the area around the boat from the dinghy we got
worried enough to move, first to mid channel and later in the evening to the
northern side. But there we remained for two full days and enjoyed the beautiful
lagoon. On the second day, we were visited by the Guardia Civil, who seemed to
have come with five people from Huelva, just for us. But they where quite
friendly and just wanted to see our papers and then they officially cleared us
into Spain.  Like
in Portugal, it seems they have lists of the boats they know are cruising in
their waters and if they recognize your boat's name they move on. The level of
alertness seemed much higher this year and we had quite a few of these fly-by
kind of inspections. Our impression was that they are doing a good job and
minimize disturbing their visitors.
The next morning we had a
longer passage to Chipiona ahead and because of that we tried to get out of El
Rompido as soon as we thought the tide would allow. But the tide, at about 1.3m
above low water wasn't enough to let us cross the bar outside the river mouth.  We
made several attempts, coming to a soft stand-still every time, yet couldn't
find a hole deep enough to make it.
So we gave up, moved back
a short distance and anchored for almost two hours before trying again. (The
picture shows Harald, impatiently waiting for more water). And yes, we had
another fly-by inspection while waiting. Later, with 90cm more water, we had
really plenty and soon were out and moving towards Chipiona where we arrived
almost at low water again. And off course, we got stopped again on a mud bank
already inside the marina. As we found out the hard way, you need to enter
Chipiona closer to the port side harbor light.  Obviously
there isn't much maintenance going on at the marina, which looked quite new and
partially unfinished two years ago and now showed signs of decay. But we really
enjoyed the place, especially the area around the nice church with its nice
street cafes, and so we stood for two days before moving on to our favorite town
of Cadiz.
For Beate it was the first
visit to Cadiz, but she too felt and enjoyed the vibrancy of this place. We
spent a whole weekend there and also had friends, who drove over from Marbella,
visiting us.
 Finally,
on Monday, June 21st we left Puerto America in Cadiz, just to cross over the bay
into Puerto Sherry, were we would leave TANIWANI for a month and return home for
a last time before our long journey begins.
Puerto Sherry was a
surprise, what we thought would be a bustling place with marina, restaurants,
facilities, apartments like shown in the plans, turned out to be a dead place
with empty half finished buildings. Only the marina seems quite filled and
reasonably maintained. Security seemed ok though, a bit reluctantly we left
TANIWANI behind.
The latest news with
respect to Puerto Sherry is, that we got a call a week later, telling us that
they made a mistake with the berth they assigned us, and that the boat that owns
it might return before we come back! They promised to tell us when they would
have to move Taniwani, but off course failed to do so, and a few days later, it
was Taniwani's little monitoring system that reported the move, and a 180
degrees turned heading after that. You can imagine that we are anxious to get
back on board...
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