Arriving in Cascais on 28/07/22 we were reminded of how pretty it is! And how many goddamn lobster pots there. And how small the entrance is and how many absolute arseholes there are fannying around in the tiny entrance with windsurfers, paddle boards dingys, floating pizzas and everything else you can imagine.

So you rock up and play Wack a Mole with the aforementioned arseholes in the tiny entrance and then you immediately have to turn 90° left. You then have to navigate across a teeny tiny channel full of teeny, tiny learner arseholes without killing them to arrive at the fuel pontoon/ arrivals pontoon/ outdoor coffee lounge and general convergence zone for everyone doing everything but arriving or refuelling.

Now whilst it causes me pain, and by this I do mean an actual, physical pain, Lee has gotten pretty good at parking the boat. But even this was going to be a snug, breath in and hope for the best and double check where the insurance documents are kind of mooring. If successful, our anchor would be overhanging the stern of a boat full of people blissfully ignoring us getting sozzled. And our stern would be inches away from a gang of small fishing vessels who’s crew were sagely shaking their heads while watching us. If unsuccessful we knew where the insurance documents were, the sozzled gang would join the throes of arseholes in the channel and we would be T Boned into the fuel pontoon resulting in a fire ball that would be deeply unpleasant for all concerned.

Well to the surprise of all concerned, and not helped in any way by the limiting factors, lots of people and what was now a rather brisk wind he parked it. Perfectly. Playing it rather cool he grabbed a beer and the dog and went to check in whilst I sorted everything else out. We filled up with fuel and afterwards decided we’d stretch the dogs paws and see where our berth was. We found the berth which was again, fairly snug and rather worryingly squished in between 2 horribly expensive looking boats. We would also be with the wind behind us.

And then we started a Matrimonial Discussion. The winds would die down later, but at this point the palm trees were almost horizontal. I considered this a tad too ‘breezy’ for my liking. Lee, riding high on his recent wave of success in boat parking decided it was no bother. I wanted to anchor until the winds died down. He wanted to go all Bruce Willis in the marina and somehow defy physics by parking it when conditions clearly were less than ideal. We had a Mexican standoff. Me on the pontoon. Lee on the boat. At this point a small child who had let go of their parent’s hand went flying past the boat and we went and anchored until the wind died down.

We did what needed doing in Cascais, stayed a few days, left, broke the mainsheet traveller, returned within the hour, collected hundreds of ball bearings, realised we couldn’t fix it so repaired it with Dyneema and left again for Porto Santo. And that was Cascais.