Date: Sunday 10 October 2021
Position: 32° 44.502 N 16° 42.728’ W
Location: Quinta do Lorde, Madeira, Portugal
Distance Sailed during the week: 31 NM
Distance Sailed total: 2810 NM
Weather: 
, 22° (and 23° in the water)
Most popular on the menu: Homemade pizza 
Animals spotted: Lizards, turtles 
Comment of the week: “What happens if we meet a bus here?!”
We started the week with some days in Porto Santo. Porto Santo is an amazing island; it has a long beautiful beach where the kids enjoyed swimming in the big waves, and a lot of hikes to explore with stunning nature, warm weather and clear blue water.
The kids have school before lunch, and then we have the rest of the day off to do other things. We did some hiking, we painted our logo onto the pier, the kids enjoyed the beach, Jonas went diving to clean the hull and changed the sacrificial anodes. Kind of scary how fast the days go by (if possible, even faster than back home).
On the crossing from Oerias to Porto Santo, we saw that the mainsail had some alarming wear marks. It turned out, on closer inspection, that it was worse than we expected and we had a rip in the mainsail caused by chafing from the top spreaders. After some calls, Jonas found a sailmaker in Funchal, who maybe would have time and would be able to fix and strengthen the sail. But only if we could be in Funchal at the latest the day after tomorrow. That sounded good, but Funchal’s marina was full and had no mooring for us. What to do then? After some more calls, we got a place in marina Quinta do Lorde and the sailmaker could meet us there instead. So, with a little bit of changed plans, we left Porto Santo early and motored (we don’t want to take the mainsail up to risk more damage) to Quinta do Lorde, Madeira, to be able to meet the sailmaker early the next day. Hopefully we could get the damaged mainsail repaired.
Quinta do Lorde used to be a five star hotel, resort and marina, with several restaurants and shops. Now, everything except the marina, is closed. The result is that it is more like a ghost village, but at the same time very beautiful. The marina is nice, but due to the fact that everything else is closed here and we want to see as much of Madeira as possible, we decided to rent a car for a week. Now we will be able to fully explore the whole island.
Madeira is well known for hiking, so of course, we started our visit here with a hike, the first to Cais do Sardinha. Only 6 km long but constantly going either up or down. We can promise that it felt a lot longer. We also had time to do a visit to Santana and see the typical Madeira houses. Another thing that Madeira is known for is the steep, curvy and narrow serpentine roads. Good thing that Jonas enjoys driving in these conditions (he says it ‘s like driving a gocart 
), the rest of the family are simultaneously excited and scared.
Next week we will continue to explore Madeira, do some more hikes and a lot of other things that Madeira has to offer.
Written by Susanna Edholm, edited by Hanna Ericksson
Liv Sailing 