Desertas

The nature preserve of the Islas Desertas is only a 18 to 25 miles trip from Madeira, depending on where you leave. And yet, the scenery could not change more. Coming from a green and warm island, you all a sudden find yourself in behind high rocky cliffs with very little vegetation and furious gusts of wind falling down the steep cliffs. Typically one carries too much sail on the last few miles when the wind increases from the typical 20-25 knots to easily 40 and more.

While we had waited for lighter wind, they were really only to be expected the next day when we wanted to visit the Selvagens, but having been at the Desertas in sort of similar conditions, we knew that the anchorage very closet to the 400m high cliff is usually rather calm. This time it was worse and we started to think that we may have to move on. But we gave it a try, picked up the mooring from the supply ship and lay relatively calm.

On shore we were greeted by a friendly park ranger who showed us around. All in the vicinity of the station as the path up the cliff is currently closed to the public due to rockfall. But we were told they are working on it and it should open again in the near future. The view from up there must be worth the 400m climb.

Usually the gusts that fall down the cliff hit the water 100-200 m offshore and close to the cliff it is quite nice. But now the wind was getting more northerly and over the night the land cools down and provides less uplift and as a result it got really gusty around 5 in the morning. The mooring seemed to hold and while we didn't get any more sleep, we had a nice and slow morning before setting off to the Selvagens around noon.