Fog bound in Fig Foz
andromeda of plymouth
Susan and Andrew Wilson
Mon 31 Aug 2009 14:03
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40.08.842N 08.51.576W
It could be a clever alliteration of someone being
poetic or it could be someone with a signficant degree of nasal congestion. But
its none of that - Figueira da Foz seems to be shortened by the local boats to
Fig Foz, which probably makes sense, but yes we had very thick fog until about
1pm today.
We left Leixoes at about 7am for the 60 mile trip
south and expected to motor for a few hours and then pick up some wind from the
north and sail most of the way down. Nope, not today! We had to motor all the
way as the wind barely reached double digits until we rounded Cabo Mondego when
it decided to change direction to the North East (warm, you can tell when you've
been at sea as long as we have :-) ) and blow a hooly! By a hooly we mean in
excess of 30 knots of wind - from 6knots to > 30 knots in less than 10
minutes! We had the main up and found ourselves doing 7+ knots heading
southeast. Very rock and roll - in a breif lull we headed up and dropped the
main before heading for the harbour about 3 miles away. By the time we had
reached the harbour entrance the wind had dropped to 8 knots - very unusual and
certainly something that gets the adrenaline going.
For mosy of the journey south the wind couldn't
make up its mind which direction to come from hence us motoring and as
Aveiro was not going to feasible for us we had to keep going until we reached
Figueira da Foz - there are no other anchorages or harbours available on this
stretch of the coast, which is largely sand dunes. We arrived at about 5:50pm
and amazingly managed to raise the marina on the phone - most times you ring
there is either no answer or the number is no longer in use! We completed the
paperwork with the police at the reception pontoon and then put 168 litres
of deisel in the tanks - ouch, its expensive here. Its also expensive to stay,
one of the most expensive on our trip so far, so having exhausted the towns
provision amenities - one market and one tiny supermarket, we plan, weather
permitting, to head down to Nazare tomorrow.
The marina is relatively small and does suffer from
the wash of passing ships and fishing vessels. However we've washed down
Andromeda and filled both fuel and water tanks so are ready for a little
relaxation before getting ready for tomorrow.
We did see Dolphins on our way down feeding and
racing around, but they didn't stay very long, quite a lot of gannets and brown
albatross and what look like kittiwakes, but not much other wildlife.We didn't
see a single other yacht going north or south which again surpirsed
us. Figueira has some very large beaches with walkways across the sand to
reach the sea - the beaches must stretch nearly half a mile from the esplanade
to the sea itself and when the sun comes out they get very very
full.
More in due colurse......
Andrew & Susan
S/V Andromeda |