How naive it was, to think that sailing along the Portuguese coast would be calmer. It's even worse tonight than along the Gulf. Impossible to sleep on my side when the ship starts rolling. Because I am in the length of the ship, I am pulled backwards or forwards, according to the principle: the boat rolls, you roll with it. (Later on I get the tip to sleep on the couch because it is transverse - too late of course). My only glass goes off and in the middle of the night I gather the shards on my knees. I put my other stuff in a safe place, but every hour there is something that wakes me up. Only in the morning it calms down again.At noon we sail about 60 kilometres past Lisbon to the south of Portugal, in a slight bend towards Sines. Tonight the temperature has changed. When I go on deck, a calm warm wind blows and on the bridge I hear that it is 17 degrees in Sines.At sea the white foam heads have disappeared and I can climb from one platform to the other outside again. I feel something sticky on my hand and pull them back from the railing. My fingers are full of grains of salt. They not only stick to the railing, but also to the stairs and the walls, it's the mist that hung over the ship during the storm night and has now descended over all metal in crystallized form.
"Today is Sunday and that's how it feels."
For breakfast we can choose the preparation of our eggs ourselves and in advance I get hot corn porridge on which the chef has put a slice of banana with a slice of kiwi in a Sunday mood. When I look outside, a mountain range looms up out of the mist. The sun breaks through. We are approaching the Portuguese coast.Probably the lack of distraction starts to weigh, because I am really impatient to go ashore. Just reading books and staring at the sea gradually takes its toll.From 2 p.m. the mountains are rapidly approaching. According to plan the pilot comes on board at 3 pm. At 4 p.m. we moor. Half an hour later I can disembark. The town is now sharply defined. Sines is situated on a hill, beautiful around a bay, with inviting white houses with red roofs and a medieval castle whose battlements are already visible.
"But the pilot boat doesn't show up."
Two hours later on the bridge. Shorty, the Chief Mate tells me there's another ship for us to go in. We'll spend the night off the coast. Tomorrow morning at 4 o'clock we sail in and from 6 o'clock 298 containers have to be disembarked. He doesn't know when I can disembark, but it is clear that his schedule is upset and I am seriously getting on his nerves. I drip off like a dog, tail between the legs.In Sines the lights are lit now. The bay is becoming an evening landscape on a postcard. It's salt in my wound, because I can't reach it... Because I promised to call Starling and I can't get a connection with my old Nokia of 35 €, Lawrence lends me his Iphone.To my surprise Starling is already in the know: at Vesselfinder she saw the MSC Alessia lying motionless for the reason of Sines and she drew the right conclusion. Her voice sounds a bit worn out. She is standing in the middle of piles of boxes that still have to be unloaded and her house is a chaos. We keep it short: tomorrow I call back from the town with my Nokia. If I can at least get a connection in Sines.
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