Porto and Figuiera da Foz with lots of dolphins!

Spectra
Paul & Norma Russell
Sun 5 Oct 2014 10:24

40:08.858N 08:51.435W                               1138 Miles from Ramsgate by Log

 

Porto and Figuiera da Foz with lots of dolphins!                      

 
 

Porto is a great place to visit and as I am sure I saw a few Ryan air/Easy jet planes flying into Porto airport it would make for a great weekend break. The city is actually two towns with Oporto on the north bank of the Douro river and Gaia on the South. Interestingly enough all of the fortified wine (Port) warehouses are situated on the South bank, so why we don’t finish a nice meal with some cheese and a glass of Gaia I do not know.  Andrew and Paula take note, a nice bottle of Gaia to bring in the new year in Grenada would go down rather well especially after some pavlova.  Well we wandered around and took some pictures of sights as all good tourists do and tried a few samples of the local wares which were very tasty. Norma announced that my deckies had reached their sell by date and so I was taken shoe shopping!!!! Personally I think they had a few miles in them yet, one still had all of the sole attached and the smell was only really noticeable if you stood down wind. Once she had beaten me into a virtually catatonic state (Norma can shop for Britain by the way) I relented and bought two new pairs which apparently has saved me a considerable amount of money. Finally, in an attempt to bring the proceedings to an end and with a rush of blood to my head I bought her a new ukulele, which is much better than the old one she has been strumming for weeks. You may wonder how shoe shopping ended up in a ukulele shop, well I refer you to the statement above, Norma can shop for Britain!

 

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Porto on the left Gaia on the right, big bird in the middle                                                Results from a full days shopping!!

 

 

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Traditional Port barges with English tourist in foreground                                            Praying to the god of Port I think

 

 

We left Porto early on Saturday morning just as the sun was coming up. As we reached the harbour entrance a small fishing boat came over with one old man on board waving his arms. He pulled up alongside and with a thumbs up said, “lovely boat, good bye, come back soon”, wow what a send off! 65 miles down to Figueira da Foz and as is normal now, no more than 10 knots of wind from directly behind. The engine stayed on at low revs and we played with different combinations of sails, as there was a fairly large swell running we were rocking and rolling all over the place and the cruising chute would not stay full. In the end we had the foresail, Mizzen and mizzen stay sail out which gave us a knot or two above the engine revs. This allowed us to maintain about 7 knots all day. Even so it was quite uncomfortable at times as she tried to roll her rails under in the swell.

 

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                                                                                            Sailing along with the colourful sails up

 

At about 1300 the cooker decided it had had enough of the swell and with a crash it fell out of its mounting plates. 20 minutes later I persuaded it back into place and tightened everything down again. Luckily enough we had lunch early so no food on the floor. That was it really until 1600 when we were rather lazily watching a group of Cormorants dive bombing for fish about 100 meters to port. Suddenly we noticed a few dolphin fins in the area so this was a combined attack on the poor fish. Cormorants from above and dolphins from below, the water was fairly boiling with activity as they all enjoyed a fish supper.  At this point I think it only fair to mention that I had dragged a lure behind us for the last 35 miles with not the slightest bit of interest shown by anything living. A group of 3 dolphins split from the pack and came our way shortly followed by about 6 others. They were really going for it, leaping clear of the water as they approached to play on our bow wave. A mad scramble for phones to take pictures ensued which resulted in Norma hanging over the side taking loads of pictures as the dolphins played and leapt around us for about 30 minutes. Not wanting to be left out I eventually found my phone and decided to take some pictures. Norma actually took 147 pictures mainly by pointing and pressing the button on the phone as quickly as possible, out of that lot she managed a few really good shots 7 of which are attached below. In the excitement, and because I couldn’t find my phone, I only managed a total of 7 pictures, all of which are attached below. I will let you be the judge of who is the budding David Bailey here.  

 

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clip_image024         Dolphins by Norma

 

 

 

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clip_image026  And now Dolphins by Paul

 

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Finally we arrived in Figueira da Foz at 1730 and tried to find a mooring under the rather helpful suggestion from the harbour master of, “put her anywhere you can fit”. Not easy, we tried to thread Spectra through the eye of a needle and managed to get alongside one berth but over half of the boat was extended beyond the pontoon and we blocked most of the other yachts in so no good. Finally we managed to get alongside an inside berth amongst the small boats at the other end of the harbour, much to the amazement of the locals as I reversed past a line of 20-25 footers to berth Spectra at the end, inside of them all.

That’s it all safe and sound in Figueira da Foz, sight seeing tomorrow and a good nights sleep tonight if the mosquitoes will allow it!