Nazere, Cascais and on to Lagos
Freespirit
Thu 14 Sep 2006 04:26
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We pressed on through the night making good speed
we arrived at Nazare a couple of hours earlier than we had planned. This
meant approaching the harbour in the dark hour before dawn. We were
met by a delightful, but almost unintelligible, bearded man who transpired to be
an English naval captain who had put into Nazare with his wife during bad
weather 8 years ago and never left! He took us through the formalities and
was very helpful but he was quickly christened Popeye by the crew.
We showered and had a rather desultry breakfast
with Tim as he packed his bags and planned his departure. When he left on
the 0855 bus into the town to catch onward public transport to Lisbon there was
a very low moment. It is always hard to break up a crew and after the 8 days
that we had been through together we were all very sad to split up. We
bought a Portugese courtesy flag at the chandelry (Popeye gave us a gentle
ticking off for not flying one) and decided to move on. The weather was
still overcast and foggy as we left and we were all pretty tired after the
previous night. However, the sky cleared and we suddenly found that we had
a favourable wind and a clear sky. We hauled out the new genoa and spent a
couple of hours working out how to set it. I was pleased to have the last
of the sails out of the bag and we enjoyed a great afternoon - sunning
ourselves, watching the coastline, testing out the new fishing line (still no
success!) and finally being able to scan the horizon. We decreed that Tim
must have been Free Spirit's equivalent to the cursed seaman
(Hornblower) and this rather harsh judgement was confirmed when
Tim phoned us the next day to say that he had taken the rain and fog with him to
Seville. However, such was his contribution to the enjoyment and good humour of
our trip that I, for one, would have gladly stayed in the fog to have him still
on board.
We made port in Cascais at sunset and were
delighted to find ourselves in a magnificent marina - beautifully designed and
well run with the best shower block of the voyage so far. We moored up and
went in search of supper to find a vibrant tourist town that strangely seemed to
be catering for English tourists as well as the Portugese. We concluded
that this must be down to the golf and the proximity to Lisbon but it was odd to
be accosted in the street by waiters speaking perfect English and inviting us to
dine at the John Bull Inn! We perservered and were amply rewarded with a
very fine meal at a restaurant well away from the main square. It was good
to eat well knowing that we could sleep late the following morning. We had
decided to start the longish passage to Lagos after lunch the next
day.
A slow start, breakfast on deck and a pleasing
session getting the water maker going took up most of the morning. Our
jokes about Tim's weather turned on us a little when it started to rain heavily
and as we shlepped into town to find lunch we got
very wet indeed. We decided to go anyway and swapped our comfortable
mooring for a very wet and windy start to the next leg at 1600. It took us
until nightfall to get comfortable with the genoa under downwind conditions and
we only really got happy with the rig as it became dark. As I write this it
is 0400 and I am about to go on watch.....
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