Monday 8 march 2004.

We have been in Portiamo now for almost 6 months and you may wonder what we have been up to during this time. Quite a lot we think but there are still a lot to do on the list.

The marina in Portimao.

Our life in the marina has been very social and we have had man y good times with wonderful sailor friends. It is international even though there are more British people than any other nationality. We have celebrated Guy Fawkes for the British, American thanksgiving, Swedish/Norwegian Lucia and the marina organized a Christmas party for everyone with a 6-month contract. In between we had Christmas Eve and New Years Eve! When the new year begun we were looking at three synchronized fireworks on the beach. They lasted for 20 minutes and it was a very colourful night.

Every day walk in Portimao.

Elvina has gotten a lot of love as well. Our mast is now quiet (!) due to the fact that we have put foam outside all the cables, which runs inside the mast. The job took us 10 days and Kris was up in the mast top for 30 hours and I was running between the deck and the salon. It was quite tricky but we succeded in the end and we celebrated that with a champagneparty on the dock for all our neighbors who peptalked us. It would have been easier to do this job with the mast down but mast cranes are very rare here so we didn't have that possibility. The water maker has yet to be installed but we are positive it will be shortly. The cap rail and all the outside teak is sanded down and will get varnished soon. We used Owatrol but it didn't do the job so we are now trying a clear varnish named Epifanes. The ones we have talked to are happy with it and we will also try to get better to rinse the salt off after we have sailed to keep up the nice look. In pilot books for tropical waters we have read that in order to keep the wood in a good shape you have to put on new coats of varnish every 6-8 weeks. The radarscreen has been repaired in Sweden to get the faults fixed, thanks Simrad! Our windlass burned in Bayona (Spain) and after we took it apart we realized the motor had died. This happened after a total of 10-15 anchorings altogether. We got lucky there too and got very good help and a new motor via Sportmanship in Göteborg. We are soon setting off again and we hope it will get a bit warmer until then. For the moment we are anchored in the neighboring village Alvor a few days to test the life outside the marina again. It's been good to just be the two of us again and get things done without interuptions. The nights are very cool, we are using our heatpal, two kerosenelamps and candles to warm it up. Then we try to sleep under one duvet, one fleece blanket and a sleepingbag each but it seems to work! We bought an electrical heater that we have used in the marina all winter and without it it would have been cold. In the daytime we have had shorts on since January though. We have promised ourselves that next winter we want it warmer than this... We needed this break though to get us and the boat ready. The plan is to sail along the Algarve coast and anchor as much as we can. We are still within our budget but we do look forward not having to spend a lot of money for marinafees. There are so much more fun things we can spend the money on. We have made two new investments during the winter; a digital camera (bought from USA at a good dollar rate) and we are taking many more pictures now than before. Developing films is expensive here and you don't get a good quality. A digital camera needs to download the pictures somewhere so we have bought a laptop. An IBM from ebay to a reasonable price. We wanted to have a computer and telephonefree zone on the boat but we have come to realize that a computer is a good tool for seacharts, pilotbooks, weather information etc. Portimao provides free internet at the library and at a museum but the ones with their own computers has connected to internet in the marinaoffice at a cost of 3 euros per hour. The same price as the internet cafes in town charge. Now I have to go and put coat nr 5 on the caprail on starboard side. The caprail on port side is done and got 11 coats. Kris is sanding a hatch to a Norwegian HR352, there is always work. Or as we say now "trading favours".

Gunilla och Krister Bewert onboard S/Y Elvina

Elvina anchored in Alvor.