Marina de Portimao a metafor for development of cruisinglife

South Pacific Familyadventure 2008
Claes Brodin
Fri 11 Oct 2024 20:52
Marina de Portimao is one of the most expensive marinas on the Algarve coastline.
In the past it was a family business but like many similar companies it was bough up by a multinational complex of companies.
After the purchase prices immidiately went up 20% and hardly any boat in this marina is below 50ft today.
Mike who is a U.K world cruiser now working as a surveyor for the shipyard told me the marina used to be full of ordinary cruisers in boats between the 30-40ft range but they are gone today. We mutually agreed that this group of cruisers are almost gone from the Mediterranean and the Algarve coast.
The majority of marinas and yards focus on megayachts where the money is. It is well known in the cruisingworld that the size of cruisingboats have grown immensely the last decades and the problem today is that cruisers departing in a 50-55ft boat underestimate the running costs as well as skills demanded to handle a boat this size and subsequently many crews end their adventure prematurely.
Out in the anchorage is where you find the real cruisers in smaller boats that have crossed oceans,who are eager to have contact and always ready to help.
Marina de Portimao is like a gated community of big boats but with closed borders in between and unfortunately it looks like this is in line with future development for cruisers in many places on planet earth.
The majority of Europe is like this today but Scandinavia (especially Norway) still has large areas of wilderness free from the tentacles of "mammon"  

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