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.
Bit worried about calling Ailsa a Castle artifact. Your visitor/passenger is fine example of Nomad “Sympetrum fonscolombii” a fairly common dragonfly in Southern Portugal.