To the Algarve

Portuguese street art

We sat out yet another bad weather system in Nazare for four days. It was a small marina in the corner of a fishing port but perfectly sheltered from the southerly winds and full of various characters on boats, both afloat and ashore.

Here there is one of the only deep water canyons in Europe, where the water is over 4000 feet deep almost to the shore. On one hand, this stops the swell from building up as it shallows nears the shore, but on the other hand produces monster surf along the beach. The highest wave ever surfed was recorded here in 2012 – 30 m high!! Thankfully, conditions were nothing like this when we were there…

We cycled along the seafront to the town itself, which, although touristy, is still ‘proper’ Portugal. Two ladies walked along the street in front of us in traditional headscarves, aprons tied neatly at the back. While the children made a sandcastle on the beach, an old Portuguese man sat 500m away playing a tune his harmonica to the sea as it crashed onshore.

old fishing boats on Nazare beach

From Nazare, we motor-sailed the twenty miles to the next headland, Peniche, admiring the stunning rock strata along the way. We arrived after dark and both children stayed up to see the first stars appear in the sky. Again this coast is full of wind turbines, and these look like fairy lights in the dark – a scattering of red lights ‘twinkling’ along the shore.

Lovely rock strata near San Martinho

                                                         

Katie helping hoist the sails 

We didn’t go ashore at Peniche, but set off early in the morning for the fifty mile trip to Cascais. Little wind was forecast so we were delighted when the wind piped up and we were able to sail for an hour or so, but it didn’t last, and we motored the majority of the trip, arriving at Cascais at teatime. We did go ashore, for a quick play on the beach and a trip to the local supermarket for supplies. We saw a little more of the town than anticipated as Dave took us on a long ‘short cut’ home!

Lighthouse at Cascais

It would have been nice to stay and explore Cascais and of course, the neighbouring city of Lisbon, but we were keen to get down the Atlantic coast while the weather was settled.  We had explored Lisbon extensively on our previous trip and there was another low pressure system due that weekend so we decided to press on.

The following day took us to Sines, an historic Moorish town, and now a large shipping harbour . Again, it would have been nice to look around but … we arrived late and contented ourselves with the view from the anchorage. The next morning was thick fog. We left the harbour in minimal visibility, dodging four huge ships anchored outside. We saw nothing until mid-morning when the mist lifted, and we had a delightful visit from a pod of dolphins, who played round our bows for a good twenty minutes. It was Reuben’s first experience of sitting in the bowsprit hammock ‘over’ the dolphins, he obviously loved the experience and chatted excitedly about them for a long while afterwards.

Dolphin-watching from the hammock

dolphins playing around the bows

As we got closer to the Cabo San Vicente, on the southwestern tip of Portugal, the fog started coming in again. Only the tip of the lighthouse was visible through a bank of fog, which we were soon ourselves immersed in after turning the corner. Several boats were also travelling our way, and we could hear foghorns all around us as we closed in on land. We passed two boats close by, both appearing from nowhere then disappearing as fast behind. Thankfully, we could anticipate (and avoid) them by monitoring the radar screen.

in fog

a wierd 'rainbow' of fog

yacht appears through fog

I was puzzled by a foghorn sounding from landward as we got near to land, but it turned out to be an echo of our own foghorn bouncing back off the breakwater! It was a great relief to safely reach the little fishing town of Baleeira and drop the anchor near the foggy outline of a moored boat. The town appeared briefly from the mist before disappearing again completely! We judged it wise not to go ashore in case we couldn’t find our boat again!

The next morning was still thick fog. This was the last good day before strong winds came in but we only had a short distance to go so had a leisurely breakfast and did ‘school’, by which time, we had ten miles visibility and lovely blue skies. In these perfect conditions, we pootled along the south coast of Portugal, admiring the ever-changing colour of the cliffs along the shore. We passed huge caves in these cliffs near Lagos, busy already with trip boats, then we skirted its long sandy beach.

Katie and Reuben in a den of sails

There was an anchorage in a lagoon at Alvor that our friends had recommended. They had gone on ahead of us from Cascais, doing a long overnight trip, and we thought we might meet up again here. We headed in rather gingerly, as the plot book was full of warnings that it shouldn’t be attempted on a falling tide or at night. Dave went the correct side of the first starboard marker buoy, then with a lurch, we got swung sideways and were aground onto a sandbank! Great!!

The tide was still rising, which was a good thing to help float us off, but also a bad thing, as it kept pushing us onto the bank. Dave climbed up the mast for a better view of the channel around us. We were not in a good position, or an easy one to get the boat off from. We quickly launched the dinghy and Dave tried to pay out our main anchor but with the weight of the chain, it was too heavy for our little dinghy to carry far. And quite a job to get the anchor and chain back in…

Then we tried laying out an anchor from the stern with a long rope and winched it in. This attempt succeeded in pulling the stern into deeper water, and, once we were afloat, we transferred the rope to the bows and got the boat pointing in the right direction before hauling it all onboard again and heading back out to sea. Phew, a huge sigh of relief! The whole operation had lasted nearly an hour, during which time, several boats had come through the entrance, taken one look at us, and turned around again!

Algarve skyline

We then motored the last five miles to Portimao, an easy and deep entrance, where we dropped anchor behind the breakwater and put the kettle on! We had a lovely spot opposite a quiet sandy beach but we had definitely arrived in the Algarve – along with lovely sandy beaches, we had passed more and more holiday resorts since ‘turning the corner’, and the skyline across the river at Praia da Rocha was a mass of high rise apartment blocks. We managed to squeeze in a trip to the beach before sunset, the children were delighted to go swimming and clamber on the rocks. There are lots of rock ‘stacks’ here, mostly made from crumbling sand and shells, Katie climbed up one and could literally pick bits of fossil out – a geologist’s heaven!

Katie finding fossils

all packed for the beach!

   

The winds Increased overnight as forecast, and by mid-morning was gusting 30 to 40 knots. It was going to get very rolly as the swell picked up, so we decided to decamp to the marina. This didn’t prove to be very peaceful either, as the swell snuck under the breakwater and caused the boats to surge violently back and forth on their ropes. We stayed one night, then returned to anchor a little further up the river off the pretty fishing village of Ferragudo, which was decidedly more tranquil, despite a little rolling motion.

site of old fort, Ferrugado

This was where our Topsham visitors, Clare and Samantha, found us two days later. They were rather disappointed to come all the way from England to find grey skies and heavy downpours! We braved the weather to go ashore for a play in the park, and lunch at a local fish restaurant in Ferragudo, by which time it was dry enough to walk along the beach and around the ‘castle’-house built on the site of an old fort.

Stork nest on chimney top

Portimao waterfront

The following day brought blue skies, so we ventured into Portimao itself, once a busy fishing town, and now rather run down in places but smartened up along the waterfront. There were several chimneys left over from the old fish-canning factories, all of them with a huge stork’s nest on the top, complete with the resident pairs of birds (and possibly chicks?). We wandered through the town, and found an authentic Portuguese eatery for lunch – the dish of the day was a simple but delicious ‘arroz com pato’ (duck and rice).

Can't work this sculpture out!!

Playing in the fountains

The children had fun with a fountain in the square -  playing chicken to run through the arcs of water before the jets changed to a different height. We visited the Portimao museum, which was housed in an old canning factory and had lots of footage of the canning process, as well as great film footage of  four ships being blown up to sink and serve as dive sites!

Portimao museum

fishcan sculpture

The children were desperate for a trip to the beach in the afternoon so we took the kayak and dinghy ashore and met up with our friends for a late afternoon swim and snorkel. Dave took us out through the breakwater in the dinghy to look at the main beach at Praia do Rocha. There was still a 1.5m swell but it had died down considerably since the gale, when waves were crashing over the whole length of the breakwater, lighthouse and all. Our next trip will be along the coast to Faro, hopefully in time for Clare’s return flight.

Clare in the kayak