Our third night out, as Barbara was on watch, she was surprised by a line of naval vessels headed north. Very big, they looked in the dark, and later I discovered that they were the ships of the NATO Standing Mine Countermeasures Group 2, an international force based in Southern Europe.

At noon on Thursday, Nov. 5th, we were abeam of Cabo Saõ Vincente, the southwest corner of Portugal, and of Europe. We turned and headed just south of east, along the Algarve coast. This is a bold coast with cliffs of reddish rock, but wherever there is a river mouth there is a village, a cluster of blindingly white houses.

About 4 hours after rounding the cape, we ran between the breakwaters into the river harbor of Lagos and stopped at the reception float just outside the pedestrian drawbridge leading to the marina.

We did not know this, but Lagos is really the home port for a great number of British yachts, and the bars along the marina sea wall tend to specialize in curry and fish- and-chips, and to resound with British accented English.

Our good friend Carl was all set to help us bring the boat back across the Atlantic, and on Tuesday, the 10th, he was supposed to arrive. We had originally arranged for him to fly to Tenerife, but when it became clear that we would not be there in time, we changed the flight to arrive in Faro, the nearest town to Lagos with an airport. His flight from San Juan was late, however, and every- thing went downhill from there.

While we waited for information, we visited the 17th-century Forte da Ponta da Bandeira, the fort at the mouth of the river, and later, as I was walking through the main square, I heard a voice call "Porter!" -- and turned to see Carl, smiling. He had taken a bus from Faro and had really enjoyed the ride. He had been wondering how he would find us, once he arrived in Lagos, but the bus station is just across the river from the marina, and as the

So all was well, and it was very good having Carl back on the boat again. Since we had the car anyway, we decided to go the next day to Sagres, the site of a fort associated with Prince Henry the Navigator, who spent most of his time in Lagos.

We stopped on the way at the small town Vila do Bispo, a small place that is very old, certainly dating from the 15th century, although authorities differ as to how much older it really is. It has a very nice church, but that was closed, so we could not see the interior. The town is a tourist attraction, but the only tourists we saw were a group of happy German surfers in a VW bus.

The fort was built in the 15th century to protect the neighboring area and fishing fleets from the predations of pirates and privateers, notably among them Sir Francis Drake. There is a story, about which I am somewhat doubtful, that the fort was also the location of Prince Henry's Navigation School.

We did more shopping, at the Farmers' Market and at Pingo Doce, and we went to the gypsy market just north of the town center. We were promised proper horsedrawn gypsy caravans, but today's gypsies seem to operate from rvs, some in better shape than others. The market is large, however, and well attended by shoppers.

The fishermen's harbor is full of relatively small inshore fishing boats, and very fresh fish is a staple on the menus of local restaurants.

One great pleasure of our stay in Lagos was meeting Helen and Hansueli, a Swiss couple cruising in their retirement, just as we were. People of great accomplishment and intelligence, they were also

Our course led southwest in a straight line to the strait between Tenerife and Grand Canary, and it was in general a very easy run. The wind was mostly light and variable, rising occasionally to 10 to 15 knots, and the sea was correspondingly calm.

Of coutrse there is always something, and just at midnight, our second night out, a noise from the engine room alerted us to a belt about to break, so we stopped the engine and yet again replaced the alternator belts. It took only aout 45 minutes to replace them, but this is getting to be a nuisance. A pair of belts used to last beween seven and nine hundred hours, but these had only been in place for three hundred, and earlier in the year two pairs were only good for 150 hours each, in spite of attention to their tension. I think NAPA must have changed their specification or their supplier, and when we return to the U.S. I'll look into other brands.

The quick phrase that best describes Santa Cruz de Tenerife is "Under Construction." Not since Provo, in Turks and Caicos, had we seen so much construction machinery in one place. To get to the city from the marina, one has to negotiate three parking lots and go through the big ferry terminal (shades of Travemunde!) to reach a bridge across the four-lane highway between the city and the harbor. One must admit, however, that it was fun to watch the ferries being unloaded and reloaded, with no time wasted.

At "Spinnaker," I was delighted to run into our friend Cliff, the owner of Teragram, who had arrived that day and was looking for some kind of electronics widget.

We had heard that Diesel was relatively inexpensive in the Canary Islands, so we arranged with the marina for an oil delivery. The next day, two astonishingly small trucks appeared on the pier behind us and one of them passed us a hose. As we ran the oil into our tanks, the first truck was being refilled by the second, which then went back to the depot for another thousand liters and repeated the process. We took on 3,000 liters, and could have used a little more, but that was what I had estimated, and that is what they were ready to provide. So our tanks were not quite full, but we had more than enough to cross the Atlantic twice over.

Our intent was to have a little breather in Santa Cruz, to prepare the boat for the crossing, and to wait for a good chance with the weather. I did minor maintenance on the engine, checking her raw water circuit, impeller, and zincs. On Sunday, the future weather looked pretty good, so we invited the Teragram crew for goodbye drinks, and on Monday morning I went to the Marine Police Office to check us out of the EU.

There were no problems, and soon I was able to return to the boat with an imposingly-stamped Outward Clearance. We lowered our Spanish courtesy ensign and at 10:45 headed out around the inner breakwater and between the parked oil rigs to the ocean.

The wind was light north-northeast, and the moderate sea on the quarter gave us a very comfortable corkscrew motion.

We picked up a few squalls on the radar our second day out, but I had email contact with Herb Hilgenberg by way of our InReach satellite communicator, and found that their cause was a weak "trof" lying across our course and that the wind would

It is always good to have Herb aboard. We make our best judgment about the weather, but one can only see about three to four days ahead, and things can, and usually do, change. Herb no longer does weather support for hundreds of boats, as he used to, but will make an exception for friends, and we are grateful. Perhaps the asynchronous nature of text messaging, instead of schedule-bound radio, is easier to manage,as well, if less immediately rewarding.

The weather continued fine, with occasional interludes of rain cells, but no serious wind or sea. The log is full of entries like, "fine running," "sweet, long swell, sea like ironed silk," "ideal conditions."

Out in the middle of the ocean, at 50°30' West, we acquired a cattle egret as passenger. What he was doing out there, we do not know. He walked around the deck, sometimes taking shelter on the after deck, for two days. We put out some fresh water for him, but we do not know if he drank any. Carl christened him(?) Perdito, and two days later he flew around the boat for a while, then went off to seek his fortune. We were still hundreds of miles offshore, but there were many ships on or near this route, and perhaps he hitched another ride.

The sea was full of flying fish, and every night several would land on our deck. One, however, came through an open pilothouse window and ended up down in the after cabin. Barbara picked him up, still alive, and threw him back overboard.

On the night of December 7th, we could see the loom of lights from either St. Martin or St. Eustatius away off to the southward.

As we headed into Neckar Island Passage, we had to dodge some two dozen charter boats headed from Gorda Sound to Anegada, and a few boats bound southeast for St. Martin.

Here, we were among friends, and there was much to catch up on, and a lot of stories to tell. It had been two years since we were last on Jost van Dyke, and in that time many things can happen. Happily, however, we found all our friends healthy and in good spirits.