Portimao and Culatra
Innamorata
Steve & Carol
Tue 28 Sep 2021 16:19
We were in Portimao for 10 days or so and had reacquainted ourselves with Portimao having a couple of nice walk around the old town and the lovely village of Ferraguda where we spent a lovely evening with Lucy and Simon (before they flew home to the UK for a few weeks) - the evening ended up a bit longer than planned as when we went to get in the dinghy to go back to our boats the tide was out - oops and we had to wait for a couple of hours until they were floating again and we were able to leave - luckily we don’t make such mistakes in Innamorata😬. We also caught up with old friends Mick and Anne from a boat called Orchestra who we last saw in the Rias of North Spain in 2017 and Rob and Kat - a couple who we met in Weymouth and who left about a month before us and who have got a 9 month contract in the marina here, we found out Rob plays guitar and he kindly offered to give Steve (who is just beginning to play) a few pointers. We had got in the water at Portimao but hadn’t achieved very much boat bottom cleaning as the water wasn’t very clear and was generally choppy due to the passage of trip and fishing boats up and down the channel so decided to wait until we were somewhere more suitable.
Having been at Portimao for a while we decided to head west and visit the anchorage at Culatra - we have never made it there before so had been looking forward to spending a little while there. We managed to sail for most of the trip but had to motor a couple of times when the fickle wind died down and arrived at the entrance to Faro and Olhoa in time to enter on a rising tide and anchored off the small fishing town of Culatra on the sand dune island of Culatra.