The weather has been pretty constant the past week. Rain every day, but with some sunny moments in between. Surfing was doable from Sunday til Wednesday, but since today the wind and has been too much. I escaped from shaky sleeping to a paid parking in downtown Peniche. The alternator change went well even though my old friend the yellow engine light came to say hi right after it.
Weather and surf updates
In my hometown there has been the first real snow the past days and the winter really has started. Here it’s also been a few degrees cooler and a lot of rain. Right now there’s a third national weather warning in the past four weeks. Heavy rain, hard winds and pretty impressive waves are predicted for the next two days. Last night I decided to sleep at my regular parking lot at Baleal, but during the night I woke up a few times because the wind shaked the van. Today I escaped to a paid parking in Peniche because this has at least a little cover.
Luckily the past three days I was able to surf. The big beach at Baleal is “out of order” since the last storm and extreme spring tide pretty much destroyed all the sand banks there. The smaller beach has been ok to surf, but of course there have been a lot of other people there too. The next days at least until Monday will be pretty much impossible to surf at least around here.
Engine issues sorted out
Naranja now has a new alternator! I had to wait one day longer, since the new alternator came too late for the first appointment. But the garage did a good work with the agreed price.
A yellow engine light appeared right after the work was done. They sorted that out too. It seemed like a weird issue first, because the code readers (mine and the professional one from the garage) couldn’t get an error code. The next day I took the car back for a more thorough check-up and they fiddled a little with their reader and the error was the familiar secondary fan fault after all. The mechanic went through all the relays and may actually have found the culprit too. There was one tiny copper wire loose in a spool of one of the ventilation relays and he tucked it in again. That fixed it at least for now.
Other news
I have been using the surf skate quite a bit and I have really surprised myself with my quick learning. I am now able to do it without stepping off for quite some distance. The day before yesterday I had my first real contact with asphalt though. The board hit a small stone and stopped. I didn’t. Luckily I just got a small cut in my hand and a little bruise in my hip. I was only wearing the wrist protection and that saved me from more pain. The elbow and knee pads would not have been any use this time, but I think I might put them on the next time anyway.
I met a Swedish guy from Umeå a few days ago. He’s been around here for a while already and he’s staying for at least next week still. He actually persuaded me to come to this motor home parking. He also gave me an idea about where to park Naranja in December when I fly to Finland for three weeks. There’s a really nice looking indoor parking garage in the outskirts of Lisbon. I already asked them for an offer and I may go for it. I will ask a couple of other places too first, but knowing that Naranja is safe indoors might be worth a few extra Euros.