Time to change country!
Lera(hen3ry)
Malcolm Cann
Fri 19 Oct 2007 21:25
Portosin has a lovely marina, a bit off the beaten track and very cheap and accommadating. A week at Portosin cost me 70.00e which is it , there're no extra to be added. I got parked on a finger which was built for a bigger boat so had loads of room to move about in, whichis one of the drawbacks to Portosin. The fishing quay/wharf is at the inside part of the harbour, so all the fishing boats come through quite fast causing some wash, this bounces the boats a bit but its not too bad. When I arrived at Portosin I saw the large canadian boat which squeezed in beside me at La Coruna, Big Sky, he left Coruna the same day as me but obviously got to Portosin a lot quicker, he left the day after I arrived. I also noticed another boat "Tide Chase" which I saw first somewhere in France, he was still there when I left, I suspect the boat had been left over the winter there, it has to be cheap. After a couple of days "Broadsword" appeared, he stayed a few days , went and had a look at Santiago and then left for pastures new.
From my point of view, since I haven't a fridge, the real problem with Portosin is the lack of shopping facilities, the local supermarket (I'd call it a corner shop) didn't do much of a selection so you had to go to the butcher for meat, and he didn't do much of a selection either.I did manage to buy some super pork chops from him without using a word of english, proud am I? For real suermarket shopping you have to go to Noia(Noya?), which is more of a town and has a supernew supermarket. It costs 1.30e each way on the bus, which for me makes it unreasonable, because I can only keep 3days worth of food which costs between 8 and 10 euros so adding 2.60e to that starts to get expensive.
Portosin is pleasant enough but the nights were beginning to get colder and what finally turned me was when I tried to poison myself by trying to keep longer than I should. I decided to leave for warmer climes, from Portosin every mile I do takes me a mile nearer the sun.
I filled the tank with diesel and set off at 10:25 on Thursday morning, the weather promised wind of about 15kts, so I expected to do the 106 miles in about 20 hours. I motored out clear of all the fishing boats and put up the sails, quite quickly I was doing about 6kts, my rapid calculations said I'd have to slow down else I'd get to Leixoes before daylight on Friday, what the hell this I later found out was only the second time I had exceeded 6kts in the whole time, let it run. The speed began to drop off and after about 2 2.5 hours I reckoned if I didn't do something it would be Sunday before I reached Leixoes, so I did it,started the engine and pushed my speed up to about 4kts.I only pushed to 4kts because I wanted to do it efficiently. The engine plodded away at 1300 rpm for the rest of the day and night. Friday morning first thing there was a little breeze, so I grabbed it, but it didn't last long. Time was wasting now so I pushed the engine up to 2000 rpm, since I seemed to have loads of fuel left, to get to Leixoes before dark on Friday, and did the last 20miles at 5kts on the engine.
When I arrived in the area I couldn't see the harbour let alone the marina, so once again I put my faith in the charts and GPS and suddenly found myself looking at the harbour entrance, I knew it was somewhere around because of all the parked ships. Prior to this I had a game of dodgems with a tanker and nearly got his speed badly wrong and ended up missing him by about 200 yards, a bit too close for comfort, especially when the wash from a ship doing 17kts hits you, but we learn something if we survive it.
Having located the harbour entrance I entered and looked for the marina, I could see all the poles sticking up but couldn't see the entrance which has a red marker on it. GPS and charts proved they are worth all the money as purely on them I pointed at a blank concrete wall and kept going. The wall suddenly showed a hole with a red mark on top, this was it, in I went and parked on the reception pontoon.
The 100 miles south to have worked, within minutes of getting out of the wind and stopping, I was boiling, so I rapidly got down to the normal level of clothing.I went and booked in for 10days because the chappie said all the facilities were here except WiFi, fool that I am I believed him. Then three of them came and moved me to my resting place for the next ten days. Once I had settled in and had a cuppa I went out to the chandlers to buy a replacement bulb, I couldn't find a chandler on site, so I asked at the office, and got directed to this clothes shop whichshe said was a chandler, the bloke there had no idea about the bulb and sent me to a motor dealer about two miles away, I didn't go , they don't have that kind of bulb in cars, and I was a bit tired.
I'm beginning to wander about this marina, it looks as if the only improvement over Portosin is the supermarket is only 3miles away not 5, the fishing boats still rock the boats. But I've only been here 5 minutes lets wait and see, at least its on the same time as England.