Cowes to Cascais - August 2004

The wind was light on the morning of Sunday 15th August as Disco's crew packed the boat up ready for leg 1 of our trip that was taking us to Falmouth. The race itself was pretty boring but at least we had some breeze to get us down to Falmouth although we did stop for in a hole for a few hours. It was a great team bonding session for the eight of us and provided us with a great deal of laughs.We arrived in Falmouth Monday lunchtime, we deserted Disco and went on the hunt for some cornish pasties - mission successful.

We spent the next day watching the weather and things weren't looking too good. A force 8 was predicted for the first part of the trip with a second low coming in to hit us for the second half. We decided to wait for the weather to calm and Wednesday morning we walked round to watch the race start. We weren't the only boat who decided not to go, Serendip and Northern Child had also decided to stay in Falmouth. The start was incredibly windy as we stood on the cliff top and watched the crews sitting on the rail fully togged up in their oilies beating upwind! Not one of the eight of us wished we were out there and we wandered back into town for a nice big brunch!

That night we ate chinese takeaway and watched the movie Zoolander on Disco. Zoolander then became the theme of our trip and we all practiced our 'Blue Steel' looks and were waiting to release our 'Magnum'. The trip provided us with our extreme breakfast chefs, Grado and Marky who opened their cafe each morning providing us with sausage or bacon sarnies, hallucinations from Stugeron, and boy was there lots of that going on. Then was the vomiting foursome who came into their own on night one, the boys putting on a far greater show than the girls. Hulia then thought she'd try a little kung fu action and head butted the heads door and broke it in two! This then gave us great amusement in 'alfresco dumping'. The team were excelling themselves in the amusing department. Back to the weather.

The first 24 hours were rough and uncomfortable with gusts up to 30knots, we were slightly cracked off and doing great speed. The weather lightened but still not much sunshine, Georgie was getting impatient, 'You said it was going to be sunny!' The Bay lost its breeze and we motored for 10hours to get us through. When reaching Finnisterre the breeze slowly picked up and then suddenly it was over 30knotds bang on the nose and we had to beat for 10hours to get round it. Finally as Matt and I came back on watch after a very uncomfortable and sleepless off watch, on the horizon the clouds were broken and sun was shining through! By evening it was strange to think what it had been like a few hours earlier. Again the breeze lightened and we battled on through, and on our final night again the breeze picked up and up, luckily this time it was from behind us and we were surfing down the waves with dolphins chasing us and leaping out. Tuesday morning the Portuguese coastline started to appear, the sun came up and there was warmth!

We made good time arriving in four and a half days, the leaders made it in four, so although 36hours late for the start and a little bit of motoring our timing was good. Cascais is as beautiful as we remembered and more Disco Kids arrive this evening ready for the IMS regatta that starts on Friday, rock on!

'Wow, you mean you can read minds!'

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