Baía d’Abra on Madeira (1)

Checking the AIS aerial   

As well as checking that the anchor was secure, we also had to do some other investigations. During our passage down from Porto Santo, we had passed close to a cargo ship and this had confirmed our suspicions that our AIS system was no longer working properly. Since we had left Gibraltar, we had been surprised that we only seemed to be picking up large ships at under 10nm from us when previously we had expected the AIS to see them a minimum of 20nm away. The ship that we had passed on the way had only been picked up by our system 6nm away! I had previously worked through all of the connections in the system checking that they were OK; the last one to do was half way up the mast. As it turned out, the connection was good so our suspicions turned to the aerial itself – had that failed? Happily, we have a spare VHF antenna on board and hooking this up into the system produced instantly better AIS reception. Clearly, our old AIS aerial had upped and died so we would need to replace it at the next suitable port.

Chardonnay of Solent arrives in the anchorage   

The job took a little longer than we had hoped but one advantage of doing it was that I got a good view of the anchorage and of the arrival of another British yacht, Chardonnay of Solent, also members of the OCC. Sadly, other than a wave and a hello, we didn’t get to meet them because they only stayed the night and were gone by breakfast time. We, however, had plans to stay and explore ashore the following day.

The beach ahead of us   

We were anchored some distance off a pebble beach, from which we could see steps and then a track running up to join the highly popular ridge walk. The potential problem in getting ashore was the swell but we watched for a while and decided that we could probably get the dinghy ashore without mishap. Just for good measure, we packed the camera in a waterproof bag and decided to row in so that we could carry the dinghy more quickly above the surf line. There were no dramas and, once ashore, we donned our hiking shoes and set off for a climb up the steep track.

View down onto the Baía d’Abra   

The effort was well rewarded with a great view down onto the anchorage and the confirmation that, despite feeling close in, we were actually anchored a long way off the foot of the cliffs and the rocky ledge protruding into the bay.

The north side of the peninsula   

We set off east along the ridgeline and, where it narrowed, we had a great view out over the north side of the peninsula. The swell crashing on the shore was an impressive sight – I wonder how many centuries it will take it to batter all the way through the peninsula at this point, just as it seems to have further east?

The track was well worn and very popular. It mainly ran along the southern side of the peninsula but, in places, over the saddles of the ridgeline.

Lava ‘chimneys’ (L), our track (top R) and the north coast   

From the saddles we were again treated to views down the cliffs onto the north side. The landscape looked scorched and brown and the cliffs showed the layers of different rock. Cutting up through the layers we could see more of the ‘chimneys’ of volcanic rock where lava had worked its way up.

Baía d’Abra, Madeira