Lisbon Portugal

We arrived in Lisbon under full sail and anchored outside the city. Our crossing was great we had consistent winds and stayed on the same tack for the whole journey. We didn't average 11 knots the whole way but it was still pretty a pretty fast crossing. My seasickness has been cured one small pill from the ships nurse and I'm all better. Shortly after our depart from Horta we got a fishing line caught in our propeller and didn't realize until Lisbon because we were under sail for the entire crossing. This fishing line managed to mess up a bearing in the propeller shaft. So long story short we are in dry dock now. The helm assembly has been lifted off, the rudder taken off and the propeller taken off, finally the shaft out and the bearing repaired. Allot of work.... other than that Lisbon has been really really awesome, actually the dry docking made it better I was able to go down underneath the hull of the ship to work. When the ship was re-painted in Turkey last year, the steel underneath the hull supports didn't get painted so we went down and prepped the metal for Esbin our new bosun to paint. Seeing the hull out of water is really cool something that I will never get the chance to see again. During the year different crew leave and come and some return we have switched our captain, bosun, chief mate, and one of our ABs since Horta. Now on to Lisbon, well its beautiful here for starters, the streets are all cobblestone, its nice and warm and sunny. I love the architecture in the city there are some really interesting buildings. The streets are really skinny here and the cars don't really fit. Our port program in Lisbon involved a group of highschool students touring us around Lisbon they showed us some of the major sites and we all went out for lunch. We ate "natas" which are a Portuguese traditional dessert. Natas are a pastry similar to a tart with custard filling in the middle - absolutely delicious. I've really enjoyed my time in Lisbon as short as it was and am really excited for Cadiz and seeing my parents. I think the best thing will be taking a bath in their hotel room and being able to go places with them and be on my own agenda and not three + other peoples' too. Having to be in groups of four in ports its getting annoying, but I realize that it is a necessary precaution. In Dakar we need to have groups of eight and at least one guy needs to be with the girls. To end off our visit to Portugal we went to a sea aquarium. It was incredible lots and lots of fish and quite rare fish too. My favourite were the sea otters really peaceful sweet animals. We also briefly visited the largest mall in Europe on our way to the aquarium which was pretty cool. So to end it all off I"m really impressed with portugal and I would defiantly recommend it to anyone who wants to come here!