Tag: Portugal

Last time we left you we were hunkered down waiting for an Atlantic blow to pass. Eventually the wind went in the right direction again, and it was time to head South again and make our way down the final stretch of the West coast of Portugal. We left Sebutal that morning and sailed out through a fleet of warships that thankfully ignored us, They seemed to be busy going round in circles. First stop was the town of Sines (pronounced Sinesh). The only place with a possible overnight anchorage on this coast. Plenty of history here, with occupation by the Romans, the Visigoths and then later in the middle ages the Moors. Modern Sines is a mixture of old town and industrial port with a huge oil terminal where they can unload 500,000 tonne super tankers. Still once you got in to the inner sanctum of the old harbour and anchor off the beach it was quite easy to forget about the industrial bit.

John on Rival Spirit had been staying in the marina here for the last week and so the next day we rowed the dinghy over to meet him and went for a look around the town.

The castle had a free museum that had an impressive collection of coins going back thousands of years as well as other artefacts from the site.

John introduced us the finest bakery we had seen yet on this trip next to the castle for coffee and cakes. As well as cake, Sines is also apparently famous as the birthplace of Dom Vasco da Gama, whom in 1497 was the first explorer to round the Cape of Good Hope and discover India. Da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India opened the way for an age of global imperialism and enabled the Portuguese to establish a long-lasting colonial empire along the way from Africa to Asia. The violence and hostage-taking employed by da Gama and those who followed also assigned a brutal reputation to the Portuguese among India’s indigenous kingdoms that would set the pattern for western colonialism in the Age of Exploration. Nice bloke then!

Feeling like a true explorer myself after a day out, I had Ailsa row me back to Azimuth, much to the amusement of John!

We were up early the next morning with the promise of a breath of wind to take us down the coast and finally round the bottom of Portugal and the foreboding Cape Vincent. Not necessarily that foreboding from a navigation point of view, more in the sense of anything with the name Vincent is likely to be trouble!

In the end there was barely enough wind, but a decent sail anyway and the first time we tried our cruising chute out too.

We dropped the hook as the sun went down just round the corner from the cape nestled beneath the huge cliffs, and had a rolly night.

The next day with the promise or more wind, we headed up the coast towards Portimao. A great start ended in a slow crawl and then champagne sailing of Force 4 and flat seas for the last hour in to the Portimao river mouth. There is a huge anchorage at the entrance behind the breakwater but it was pretty much full of boats, so we squeezed in on the edge.

Portimao is basically a tourist resort in the Algarve and we weren’t totally enamoured with the place. The anchorage had the potential to be lovely other than the constant stream of tourist ribs, fishing boats, high speed cats and jetskis that buzzed us constantly throughout the day. At night we had the boom of the speakers from the beach clubs too! Oh well, we ain’t complaining. Portimao did provide some useful shopping opportunities and sourcing some boat parts. Also, jusy up the river was the delightful little town of Ferragudo with small winding streets and excellent restaurants. Ourselves and John took a couple of trips for some nice meals out. This incident was funny … after ordering their “Chicken in hot stone” and “Tuna in hot stone”. Ailsa and John were helped in to these bibs?! It became apparent why when the food came delivered with a hot stone that they had to cook the food on themselves.

To wrap up then here’s some pics taken from the anchorage. We had some decent sunsets to accompany our gin and tonics!

Catch you next time as we sail back in to Spain, and then head on to Gibraltar.

Hi again everyone! Since we last left you in Porto, we have been busy sailing south again down the Atlantic coast of Portugal. As I write this we are hiding out in the Sado river estuary as a big Atlantic Low works its way through.

Lots to tell you about then. I’m sure the title intrigues!

Our first sail after Porto was an overnight one down to a little headland and the town of Peniche. This part of the Portuguese coast does not give you many options other than a few small marinas. We are far to big to get in to most of those, or the marinas are far to expensive for our taste, hence a longer run South. It was a lovely sail, although mysteriously during the night Ailsa was struck down by sea sickness? Not rough at all, but something got her good. Over to Dom then to sail through the rest of the night!

We arrived in Peniche in the morning and dropped the hook in a rolly anchorage. Both pretty exhausted. So we chilled for the rest of the day, knowing that we needed to move on the next day because the wind was to swing to the South, making this location untenable for another night. The next morning, Ailsa looked terrible! She had been struck down by a horrible migraine. Unfortunately though, we couldn’t just stay put, so it was singlehanded sailing day for Dom! We left to head further South to Cascais on what was to be a beautiful sail, although poor Ailsa didn’t see any of it….

We arrived in Cascais just as the sun was setting and dropped the hook in the bay. An early night was interrupted at 12 30 in the morning by an almighty explosion which physically rocked the boat!! We both jumped out of bed to find ourselves about 100m away from a fireworks display being launched from a string of dinghys in the middle of the bay! Talk about a rude awakening … the fireworks were literally cascading down around the boat. We had no idea what was going on, but apparently it was to mark the end of a music festival that had been going on that week. The picture doesn’t do the moment justice!

It was time over the next few days to explore Cascais and Lisbon.

Cascais’ anchorage is nestled in the bay outside the town but open to the South and that made it quite rolly. Non the less, Cascais was well worth visiting. It had a different feel to Porto. Being close to Lisbon, you could tell there was plenty of money here, and none of the derelict sea front buildings that were all over Porto. All the streets are paved with mosaics, and it is very touristy. We took a stroll up the coast to see a natural sea arch called the Boca do Inferno. It was worth the walk after fighting our way through the tourist stalls and the restaurants that crowd the entrance.

Heading back in to the town we stopped at a museum in a fancy Portuguese castle which gave a welcome relief from the heat

Adjoining the castle was a beautiful park providing shade from eucalyptus trees and many cockerels roaming free. The lake in the middle was shared by ducks and terrapins…

We wondered around the narrow street of the old town and the sea front, and really enjoyed the feel of the place.

John on Rival Spirit was also in the anchorage at Cascais and we agreed we should all take a day trip to Lisbon to see the sights. Only a short train journey from Cascais, Lisbon is just down the coast and sits on the Targa river.

We had a great day out wandering around the old town, although we all agreed it wasn’t as nice as Porto! Still worth the trip. The pics below give you a feel

It was time to move on again. The wind has been very fickle and the next day was a sailing opportunity to move a little further south. More worrying for us, a large Atlantic low was due to blow in to the Portugal coast, and Cascais would be a horrible place to anchor. Just down the coast is a place called Setúbal, which has a narrow opening to the coast due to a huge sand spit called Troia peninsula that works its way across the river Sado. On paper it looked like a good place to hide out and wait for the low to pass.

It was actually a really nice sail south on a beautiful day

John sent us this video of us as we passed him on the way. Its quite nice to see yourself as you are sailing along!

As we neared the entrance to Setúbal, we realised we had not factored in the tide. It was reminiscent of the good old Bristol Channel! And would you believe it (the peeps from Portishead with appreciate this) we had to get out of the way of this boat…. on its way to Bristol!

Setúbal was actually a large port and military area. Its been a pleasant enough place to stop and wait for the blow to go through. On the sail down here, I stubbed my toe on something on deck. I woke up the next day in some pain and my foot quite swollen! Good job we had a few days here. Dr Google diagnosed a broken toe for sure … but actually 5 days later and Im cured! Boat jobs beckoned whilst we were waiting around. We have been scrubbing the decks for a while now getting rid of the traces of a Portishead winter. I was outside for a few hours the other day in the rain and the wind … and got sunburnt all over my back! No sun in sight!

Troia was actually a really nice anchorage just off a deserted beach. Oh and just down the road were roman ruins of the largest Roman salt fish production facility known. Actually really interesting to see. A site with roman baths and salt fish production tanks that was worked for 500 years producing salt fish for the whole roman empire

We leave you with some shots of the local area. Really nice feel and a good place to wait out a storm!

Catch you next time as we head towards the Algarve!

Last time we left you in Baiona. It was time to head head further South and explore the Portuguese coastline. First stop Porto! We were excited about seeing this place and we were not disappointed. In fact we liked it so much we stayed for a week and were sad to leave. That in case I thought Porto was worth a post all of its own….

The sail down from Baiona to Porto was pretty easy. Another downwind sail which we are now getting better at. The sea was rolly but we made great time, and our first stop was the little port of Laxioes about 2 miles North of Porto. What a dump! It was a proper working port, so maybe to be expected. However, they were in the process of dredging the harbour. We spent a very unpleasant night expecting to have our anchored sucked up at any moment by a 150m long dredge we will call the green dredging machine. At one point it came within 20 metres of us at anchor. Its somewhat disconcerting to say the least!

The next day we made a quick exit even though we found ourselves in thick fog and headed in to the Douro River to drop our anchor in Foz, about 2 miles from Porto centre.

Now this was more like it! A superb anchorage with easy access to the shore and a walk to get right in to the centre of Porto. Palm trees swaying in the breeze and insane jet boats bombing past throwing tourists around…

We settled in for the night, and then took our first trip in to town with no idea where we were going! Sometimes that’s the best way to just go and explore. The walk down the river was spectacular and we soon found ourselves climbing steep hills through winding narrow streets in to what we thought was the historic old town (apparently not!) and found ourselves in a square with a market, an old church and several restaurants. Time for a spot of lunch…

We had a wonderful first day and walked about 9 miles in total in the heat. And managed to eventually pub crawl our way back to the boat!

After a wonderful day of exploring, something still didn’t feel quite right? The pilot book described the historic old centre of Porto as medieval narrow street clinging to the edge of a steep hillside. Maybe we hadn’t actually visited this yet? The next outing then we took along John from Rival Spirit in an attempt to find the true centre of Porto. Turns out we just needed to walk a little further down the river! Here we found exactly what was described. A really stunning place all based around the river where you could get totally lost in the winding little streets and then at the top of the climb find yourself looking out over the rooftops of the whole city

No trip to Porto is complete though without sampling the delights of the local Port wines. This was to be our third mission… Ourselves and John set out to explore the port houses on the south side of the river. We chose the oldest port house in Porto for our sampling session , Kopje. We were not disappointed. Myself and John chose to try the sublime menu that included 5 glasses of Port including two white ports, and two ‘single harvest ‘ ports one of which was aged 1978. What a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, drinking fine ports and eating the accompanying chocolate. Highly recommended!

Slightly worst for the wear we eventually stumbled out of the Port house and there was still more to see on this interesting side of the river. It has a great atmosphere.

In the end we stayed in Port for a week. We could have stayed longer, so we were a little sad when the threat of some bad weather moved us on. Join us next time as we head South again towards Lisbon.