Miss Diane

My sister in law Diane “Snawbaw” Newlands came for a visit to the boat at the end of September for a few days.

It was nice to see her and between eating and drinking we found time to visit Salema, Sagres and sailed along to Portimao where we anchored and went in for a swim.

 

Well, here we are in the Algarve.

It’s now time to relax and chill, if by any stretch of the imagination sailing since April can be described as hard work! However it is nice not to have to passage plan and fret about wave height, weather patterns and wind direction. We could’ve probably kept moving for a wee while yet but having visited Lagos last December, I think we always knew we would stop here. (I am writing this, so any feelings I am attributing may just be mine -Gordon.)

There is a long beautiful beach here not far from the marina that stretches four miles along to Alvor and then further to Portimao which is great to walk or run on.

The further East (Alvor direction) you go the more likely you are to encounter naturists exercising their democratic right to show off their wares. Unfortunately, predominately male, these specimens are usually well past their Cruft’s dog show best. Think dried figs and you’ll get the drift.

Though so as not to disappoint all the lady readers here’s one of the younger specimens!

Daniel Craig eat your heart out lol

 

It was quite foggy on the sail down to Sines past some incredible capes, this one disappeared 5 minutes later, I didn’t see it I was having a kip below and came up when the sun came out LOL.

 

We met a guy in La Rochelle, John Laverty from Ireland who told us about this place, he is planning on bringing his boat here later this year for the rest of the season and the winter. It’s a nice wee marina and the people are very helpful, it’s also extremely reasonable; I think the last one I’m going to be able to say that about as seemingly things get very expensive from now on.

The weather has turned pretty rotten and we are going to be here a few days. It rained for a lot of the day today so didn’t manage to see too much of the place, just a run along the front for me then a trip up the town for some shopping.

We had Carol and Keith over for a wee drink before dinner tonight, Gordon cooked tonight, what a nice change. Tomorrow I think we are going to see where Vasco de Gama was born,  in the castle up the hill. 

 

Sines by night, that’s the castle lit up on the hill.

Hi Gordon here, taking over from the Blogger Bint. I was a wee bit disappointed with the treatment of Vasco in his birthplace. OK he was a bit of a tyrant to his crew but he still navigated to India when everyone that the world ended South of Cape St Vincent.

As you can see there only remains a statue to his achievements and that is surrounded by graffiti – a bit like vandalising the Elgin Marbles. Having said that, I suppose the Greeks do think we are vandals for nicking them.

 

 

There is a museum in his “house” but very little to commemorate his voyages – strange. I managed to get a sneaky but you are not allowed to photograph inside.

 

 

If you look closely you can see Betty Da Gamma at the windae.

View from aforesaid windae.

 

 

 

We are staying until Sunday and may have a mini flotilla Tyra, Bright Spark and Camira setting off at 0400 to round Cape St. Vincent.

Oh no we didn’t the skipper changed his mind or rather the forecast weather did it for me and we ended up leaving on the Saturday evening for another overnight sail.

 

Sunset 10 miles of the coast of Portugal

We had a good sail for part of the night and then got so headed by Southerlies we had to put the engine on. We reached Cape St. Vincent at dawn and I woke Louise up to see it and the dolphins that swam along with us for a while. If I can I will send this blog edition “non” PDF so the movies will work , if you end up with the usual PDF then I couldn’t and the movies won’t work!

 

 

Dawn at Cape St Vincent with the fog starting to roll in!

 

The point of Piedade, only 5 miles or so from our destination for this year, Lagos…

Its round there but keeps coming and going in the fog

 

Entering the final stretch at Lagos.

 

Well done crew and well done wee Camira.

Believe it or not the fog lifted about an hour later to bright sunshine.

 

Lagos Marina 14th September 2014

Since leaving Ardossan on 25^th April, we have visited 6 countries, logged 1,986 miles and have been underway for 17 days 3 hours, 411 hours in all.

The crews of Bright Spark,Tyra & Camira headed off in search of a typical Portuguese meal that night……curry !

 

 

 

Tyra headed of for Cadiz the next day and Bright Spark just along to Portomaio.

Hope we meet up again….

 

Cheers for now

Captain Chaos

 

Still southerlies so wind on the nose all the way. What happened to Portuguese northerlies???

 

Cascais was a lovely place.

  

 

We had a great meal in a wee restaurant recommended by the lady in the marina. Typically Portuguese, in fact we were the only non-Portuguese in the place, not fancy but just really nice food and at a good price. More than could be said for the marina, the most expensive so far since leaving Scotland. It cost 68 Euros for two nights, now this I might have accepted had I been able to get a night’s sleep….no, another noisy place with would you believe it karaoke of all things till 2 or three in the morning!

One good thing about the marina though is there is a good hairdresser’s there where I treated myself to a well-deserved cut and blow dry. At least this time the girl and I could communicate in English, unlike France where it was all by sign language…..maybe not the best time to get a haircut. The girl was desperate to do something with my colour as well, but I don’t think she had enough hours in the day to sort that out. I’ll put a wee rinse in for Diane coming out later this month, hopefully it won’t turn green.

 

 

Carol and Keith are still on the same route as us and had us over to their boat for a few drinks. They have been on the go for just a couple of weeks so far and are heading to Sines next like us.

 

I will do these two places together as we weren’t impressed by either one.

The only good thing I have to say about Nazare was that we did manage a pretty good sail there. Camira was allowed to do what she naturally wants to do…. sail!

Nazare looks promising on the approach

  

But it’s a real working harbour which I don’t have anything against; however, it could do with some money being spent on it. The toilets and showers leave much to be desired, the pontoons creaked and groaned like my knees, just not somewhere that we wanted to spend a lot of time.

It does boast the biggest wave surfed – this is the same bit of sea ………..amazing!

One night and off to Peniche with the expectation of better things. Sadly, our expectations were dashed. No one in the office to register with so no keys for pontoon gate or toilets which meant one of us had to stay on the boat while the other went ashore to allow entry back in. The town itself was nothing much to talk about either, so one quick night and a sleepless one at that, music from the shore till the wee small hours. “Bright Spark” and ourselves left at 7am next morning without being able to pay. I have no shame in that as any tariff would have been too much for what was on offer

 

Left Porto at 7am for Fig, Da Foz, another 12 hours further south. Now for those who maybe don’t know, we should be having northerlies all the way down this coast and should be a nice downwind sail, Not us, it’s in the complete opposite direction, right on the nose. Hey Ho! We won’t let that put us off, just means we need to motor sail as the passages are too long and would take us forever to beat into the wind for say 60-70 miles and still make ur destination in a reasonable time.

We stayed here two nights, it’s a nice marina, only one complaint, the facilities were a bit of a distance. With the best will in the world even those with a good constitution wouldn’t make it round there without relatively longish advance warning of the need to go!

We went into town both nights – the first night there was some excitement about the arrival of some “big” woman in a frilly frock arriving at the casino along with some horses.

 

Quite impressive casino!

Next night we decided to give the local Taj Mahal a go. Great curry!

 

Even though we had a spectator for most of the meal (at the window)

 

Great name for boxer short shop Eh?

So all in all we thought Fig Da Foz was more than acceptable. We also bumped into Carol and Keith of “Bright Spark” who seem a nice couple and are pretty much going our way till at least Lagos. They have done their trip in stages and this stage is to Malaga where they plan on leaving their boat for the winter. The prices they have been quoted are more or less half that of Lagos, so we have e-mailed them for a quote. Quite a bit further on than we had planned to go, but it won’t do any harm to find out.

 

Well, here we are in another country, Portugal.

 

We couldn’t have picked a better place to arrive than here, we both really liked Porto. It’s a relatively small marina where the marinara comes out to meet you once you have called up and helps you tie up, nice touch. By the time we got sorted out with registering and getting settled in we ate on board and had an early night after another 9-10 hour sail.

Next day we decided to be typical tourists and went into Porto from the wee village where the actual marina is. I was actually quite surprised at the basic facilities we so easily take for granted at home that are not available here for the locals. Walking into Porto through the village there was a communal area where they would take their washing to hang to dry after washing in the local “wash house,” which was a big square room with large stone baths where they washed their clothes, bedding etc., and back breaking work like they did in the old days. Once I seen this it explained why, when the lovely lady in the marina showed me the laundry room with a large washing machine said I could see why she was so excited when it arrived

Porto is great! It’s got such vibrancy about it and such a mixture of, well, everything.

 

Walking in from the marina along the Rio Douro

 

The cable cars made us feel like we should have our skis with us.

 

 

 

 

We crossed the upper span of the bridge in the background which has fantastic views.

 

The railway station with tiled historical scenes.

 

We both love Port, so that was obviously something we wanted to sample, the port houses and the tours. We visited two, only for comparison purposes you understand.

 

 

 

You just can’t leave empty handed!

Lunch was definitely next on the agenda, to soak up the port if nothing else. Fish, fish and more fish is the main food here. I’m in heaven!

We had been a bit apprehensive about Portugal and have heard so many stories about the bureaucracy when entering each port re boat safety standards, tax, light dues etc. If Porto is anything to go by it looks like there won’t be any problems, everyone has been really helpful and couldn’t do more than enough for you. Hopefully this will be the case in all ports.

 

Not a huge amount of wind and in the totally wrong direction for where we were going, yes we could have beat into it all the way but it would have added hours onto our journey, so motor sail it was. There was still a fairly large swell especially just about an hour from Bayona, it really whipped up. We did take some photos of it but as usual in the pics it looks like a mill pond so we won’t bother putting them on otherwise it looks like we are talking rubbish.

Cardinal buoy on approach to Bayona with the surf breaking on rocks beyond

Initial impressions were just ok, however, the more you see of this place the more you get to really like it. There is the old part at the back which is all wee alleyways and cobbled streets which are packed with cafes, bars and restaurants. Great place to be on a Saturday night, people watching.

We did as the Spanish do and went for a stroll round the streets, stopping off for the occasional refreshment which is supplied with a small plate of food. You could just go from place to place and by the end of the night you would have had dinner, but we found a lovely restaurant where we had an amazing meal. Far too much ordered, but we did manage to eat it all the same. The black pudding was as good if not better than the Stornoway stuff

 

 

Out for a meal

Today is Sunday and we decided to have a relaxing day going to the beach. Gosh! It’s noisy on the beaches here. They all go for a few hours and catch up on what’s been going on the rest of the week. There was even some old geezer doing his exercises at the back of us. All I could hear was this grunting and groaning, I was wondering what I was going to find when I turned round. Our few hours on the beach was followed by a trip up to the castle and Gordon also went for a look at the replica of the Pinta which is here. This is the first place Columbus made landfall after discovering the Americas.

 

 

 

One of the beaches with the fortress in the background

 

You need a head for heights!

Gordon riding his horse …. Lol.

We are moving on tomorrow, so Bayona is our last place in Spain for now anyway. Tomorrow it’s Portugal. I wonder what that will have in store for us?

This is where we are headed, straight out

 

As it turns out we decided to go for the trip round Finnisterre.

On the way out the swell was well over two and a half metres at times, was a bit like a roller coaster.

We reckoned on it lessening as the day wore on which is what happened thankfully.

The pic below is us rounding Finisterre, Don’t know if you can appreciate the swell from it? If it helps, there is another boat there, but she is hull down behind the swell.

 

According to the pilot books once you get to the Ria of Muros the weather is supposed to immediately change for the better. We hoped so.

And so it did…… Muros town was very pretty with “Canary Island” windows in the houses, little winding alleys and odd little squares all with cafes and bars. I think it’s amongst one of the nicest places we have visited along the coast. It’s only a shame we spent one night there.

I am writing this as we sail further down the coast to Bayona which will be our last stop in Spain, so it will soon be up with the Portuguese courtesy flag.

 

                  Entering the Ria                        The “Crew “ready with the shore lines

 

Next stop Bayona , in about 5 hours.

Bye for now.

 

We reluctantly left A Coruna on Sunday 24^th August bound for Ria de Camarinas, a long established waiting point for favourable weather to round Cape Finnisterre.

On the way we were visited by some dolphins

 

 

We chose to say in Muxia on the South West of the Ria as opposed to Camarinas. It’s a new marina and empty, the 1^st night was only ourselves and a German cruiser. It’s not the most picturesque town but it grows on you and the Marina staff are excellent.

We are now established in the Gallician Costa da Morte and just to demonstrate Mother Nature has dished up 3 days of hoolie ……so far!

Just so we are not sickening you with pictures of blue skies and sunshine here are some pics from the last few days , storm bound in Muxia.

 

  

  

                View from the top of the hill with the marina in the background below

 

                   Costa da Morte                                             Clown!

 

                                                                          Anyone got a Neurofen?

Wee red fishing boat in the empty marina ……………. Just cos I like it.

It’s now 1900 on Wednesday and I am just about to go up to the office to check the feasibility of leaving tomorrow to go round Finisterre. I am not hopeful given the winds that have been blowing up till now. The swell will be quite big. I think it may be Friday before we leave. Heh Ho! Will let you know later.

Bye for now