Finally, we have met another Swedish sail yacht. Recently we have merely come across Norwegian yachts, no worries though since the Norwegians are all very nice. However, lately we have started wondering whether the Swedish sailors have died out or something, until we met HMS Gladan in Lisbon. For those of you that are not familiar with HMS Gladan, it is one of the Swedish Navy’s school ships. Maria and I got very excited; I mean who doesn’t love men in uniform?! Last Friday we were out partying in Lisbon and at a nightclub I suddenly heard guys speaking Swedish, it was some of the young cadets from HMS Gladan. They were in civilian clothing at the time, but anyway handsome. Then I got another proof of the fact that the world is smaller than you think, one of the cadets was the little brother of an old friend of mine. The young cadets were very nice and managed to get us permission for visiting HMS Gladan (on the assumption that we would be cousins to one of the guys…). We got a guided tour onboard HMS Gladan by handsome cadets in uniform, it was very pleasant. When leaving Lisbon we decided to joke little with the guys onboard HMS Gladan, or more correctly make the cadets on duty work. Flags are important at sea, it is a good way of greeting each other. When a yacht is greeting a ship like HMS Gladan it is of particular importance that they respond in the right way. They are then forced to lower their flag to greet. When passing HMS Gladan we held our flag horizontal forcing them greeting us. It took some time before they realized we were greeting them, but then there were some activity and they lowered their flag.

Besides a visit on board HMS Gladan Lisbon offered some relaxed days of shopping and sightseeing. I also had a nice reunion with an old Portuguese friend whom I met when I visited Lisbon four years ago. We left Lisbon last Sunday and at the moment we are at anchor outside beautiful Cascais. For those of you interested in knowing what happened with our dirty clothes, I am glad to tell you we handed it in yesterday at a laundry here in Cascais. We are going to pick it up later today and hopefully it will be worth the 18 Euro we are paying for it, at least it is cheaper than using the expensive washing machines in Cascais Marina.

We are leaving Cascais tonight for Sines, situated 50 Miles south. In Sines we will make the decision when to start journey towards Madeira and Porto Santo. Unfortunately there is a low on its way that might cause us trouble. We are going to follow the weather forecasts closely and get some advices from a retiredweather forecaster, Ron, skipper onboard the smallest yacht in the ARC competition, Zahara. We will see what happens, as mentioned before sailing is hard planning and unfortunately we cannot master the weather. /First Mate