After 20 months in Porto Santo, Emerald’s crew sailed south, docking at Las Palmas for essential repairs, and upgrades. The uncertainty about availability and the return of Med-mooring challenges had a happy ending. We settled into the convenience of marina life, pleasantly surprised by the peacefulness, despite the city setting.

Departing Porto Santo for Gran Canaria, 310nm south, we anticipated challenging conditions, with 3m seas astern. Departing with a downwind rig and despite uncomfortable movement and little sleep, we managed through changing winds and rig adjustments. After three days and a precarious night entry into Las Palmas, we arrived, relieved.

Conditions eased on day two of our passage from Porto Santo to The Canary Islands. We dropped the downwind rig and changed to a more comfortable sail plan for a broad reach.

Our report from day one of our passage from Porto Santo to the Canary Islands. Under the downwind rig, we rolled through the day and night, with sleep eluding us.

Porto Santo’s winds are influenced by the Azores High. The harbour provides good protection from the prevailing north/northeast winds. However, south to southwest winds bring challenges, and an occasional named storm can bring uncomfortable conditions for boats both on the moorings and pontoons.

After a tricky departure from the pontoon in blustery conditions, we returned to the boatyard to investigate the overheating propeller shaft. We made repairs, replaced damaged cutlass bearings, and recalibrated the alignment between engine and prop shaft. Back in the water, testing showed no overheating, allowing sailing plans to resume.

With Emerald back afloat, we were making plans to sail away south. But unknown to us, our batteries were starting to fail. Was this the right time to change to Lithium LiFePO4?

We were feeling low after our failed attempt to sail away from Porto Santo. We couldn’t fix the propeller shaft bearings until a space came free in the yard. In the meantime, we needed to restore our spirits, so we went in search of some festive fun in Funchal.

18 months ago we’d arrived at Porto Santo with a broken engine. Since then we’d ridden a rollercoaster ride of emotions as we’d attempted to fix and rebuild it. At last we’d reached our moment of reward, setting off for new horizons. Or had we…

We just had some Coppercoat repairs to complete before choosing a date to launch Emerald. We were feeling a swirling mix of emotions – excitement to be afloat again tempered with the fear of something going wrong. And there were many things that could go wrong!

We had one big boat job left to do to be able to escape the boatyard, but the weather had other ideas. It was another lesson in how patience is a good trait to have to make the sailing life go smoothly…

Perhaps you were wondering where we were at with our boat engine rebuild? And why did we think we had a dose of the commentator’s curse? Click the link to find out.

Our hydraulic autopilot developed an oil leak. As it’s an old model, servicing support was no longer available, so we took on the task ourselves. Here we share our experiences and tips for servicing a hydraulic autopilot

With our rebuilt engine back in the boat, the next big step was to test it. But before we could do that, we needed to reconnect the ancillary systems. And of course there was an expected issue…

Gaskets have been one of our biggest issues during the engine rebuild. First there was the tear in the timing case gasket, then having remedied that, the oil sump leaked oil from all around its new gasket.