We Left Our Mark on Porto Santo || Sailing SV Goat ep 117

There is half a kilometre of breakwater on Porto Santo, and every boat that ever staged here for an Atlantic crossing has painted its name on it. We arrived after four days at sea. On the first afternoon ashore I walked the length of that wall reading other people's logos — hundreds of them, going back years, every one belonging to a crew who did exactly what we had just done. No charter boats. No day-trippers. You cannot get to this island unless you sailed here. Standing in front of it I said we had no paint, so we probably would not be leaving ours. This is the episode where that turns out to be wrong. In between: an island that refuses to be interesting for about a day and then completely changes its mind. The town on a Wednesday afternoon is shut, empty, and has, in my professional assessment, nothing to see. So we hired bicycles instead of the scooter I wanted — because the woman who rode a Harley Davidson to Norway has decided that scooters are the evil — and rode into forty-five degrees of heat to find windmills in better condition than the famous ones in La Mancha, a wild north coast with nobody on it, caves cut into the cliff, and a rock tunnel that opens onto a beach with natural pools and not one other person. It is the closest thing I have found to Ibiza before Ibiza happened. No lidos, no beach bars, no music. I would recommend it to anyone. And then, on the eleventh of July, we went down to the wall with a tin of white paint. CHAPTERS 0:00 Welcome to Porto Santo 0:40 The wall 1:30 No paint 2:15 Everyone's journey is their own 3:00 Nine kilometres of sand 3:25 No shops, no provisions, just wind 4:10 The town is closed 5:05 Columbus lived here, allegedly 5:35 Her street 6:00 Absolutely no scooters 7:15 That was a stupid idea 7:35 The windmills 8:20 The high road 8:45 Into the wild 9:20 A free Ibiza 10:25 The caves 10:40 The tunnel 11:30 Your own private beach 12:30 The thatched bar 13:25 We survived the bike trip 14:05 Committing to the tradition 14:45 Paint it high 15:20 The south side 16:00 The white is drying 16:20 Painting it 17:30 He did everything 17:45 Standing back 18:05 The wall entire 18:20 The tile 18:45 The anchorage Next: the passage to Madeira. Follow along so you don't miss it. Filmed aboard SV Goat, a Lagoon 400 we live on full time. Vlad supervises, from the boat. #SailingLife #Liveaboard #CatamaranLife #Lagoon400 #SailboatLife #SailingVlog #Catamaran #PortoSanto #Madeira #Portugal #IslandLife #Atlantic #BlueWaterSailing