(No. 10) South from Lisbon
Catou
Paul and Sylvie Tucker
Wed 28 Jul 2010 08:43
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Sunday 25th
July (Lisbon - Cascais (10' west of Lisbon))
Sorry for the lateness of the last blog. Most marinas
now have their own wi-fi facilities - but in Portugal, as far as I can tell, all
the marinas are government owned - and therefore, though the pontoons and
actual marinas are OK, the facilities are limited - for example the shower and
toilet facilities are usually pretty basic. Few have wi-fi facilities,
as with the Lisbon marina, so the manager pointed to the cafe behind and
said theirs sometimes worked! The first evening we went to the cafe for a
beer/to send the blog. Though the wi-fi signal came up on my lap-top, I
couldn't connect - the same the second evening. On the third day
I saw a young chap at the cafe with his lap-top and asked him if wi-fi was
working today. Pointing at three tables, he said that it always works, but only
at these three tables!
We couldn't stand another day of the heat in the
city. It was just too hot to sight-see. We thought that we would put
to sea and have some respite from the city heat. We were
intending to sail a little further up the Tabus river, but it was such a lovely
day, that we thought we would have a sail down river against the flooding tide,
and then come back on the last of the flood mid-afternoon. As we set off,
we were making about 1 - 1.2 knots (mph) over the ground, but the slight breeze
picked up and we ended up having a really beautiful sail downriver. It was
extremely hot. The foul-tide slowed us down - and
simply extended our wonderful sail. In the end we decided not to
bother to go back up river - but instead, return to the
lovely Cascais bay some 10 - 12 miles west of the city and dropped the hook
for a day or two. With the foul tide, it took us 5 1/2 hours to
cover the 12 -miles! - but it was one of the most
enjoyable sails we have had all trip! At the
start, the wind was behind us so we tacked 'down-wind' to get some wind in
the genoa - then suddenly the wind went around 180 deg to the opposite
direction, so we continued to tack - but upwind! We
found tidal eddies and counter-eddies + advantageous winds and counter
winds in the river - and beat every Portuguese yacht we saw!
Finally we arrived in Cascais bay at about 1700
hrs. It was full of local yachts enjoying the Sunday afternoon, but
we found a vacant spot to drop the hook between a British, a Dutch
and a German yacht, checked the anchor was well dug in and retired to have
a rest after an exhausting day! Since the sun had been so intense
we decided to break out our newly-made Bimini cover.
It is only a little canvas cover to give a small footprint shadow for
the helmsman. It was very successful, but we had to make a modification to
it - Sylvie added a towel which hung down behind it between the two backstays -
held on with 8 clothes pegs. It made all the difference!
A very warm evening, so we opted to stay on board and have a quiet meal.
Monday 26th July (At Cascais
Bay) We finally went ashore at about noon, and after tying up
the dinghy in the marina (which we were warned not the take Catou
into due to price - we later discovered that it was 50 Euros a night where
most others are about 30!) It was blisteringly hot - actually 40-41 deg C.
(that's 112 deg F!) It was as much as we could do to walk into town and we
slumped into a chair in the first bar we found (happened to be an Irish
bar!) and ordered a beer. We went on, found a local spot for lunch,
and then, with huge effort did some minor shopping and slunk back to the
boat. Heat apart, it was a very beautiful town, the little that we saw of
it - by far the prettiest and most 'chic' town that we had come across anywhere
on this coast. The modern Portuguese architect hadn't been let loose on
this area thank heavens, so the were no soviet-style blocks of apartments as
there seems to be everywhere else here. It was once a royal resort.
In 1870 King Luis l established his summer residence here, and that firmly
placed it of the map I think. Locals claim (according to the guide book) that a
local fisherman from Cascais actually discovered America in 1482, 10 years
before Columbus, but the latter got the credit! Anyway, it's a lovely
town, and I'm just sorry that we didn't have the energy to explore it in those
temperatures.
Tuesday 27th July (Cascais Bay -
Sesimbra) We really didn't think we could stand another day of
yesterday's heat, so we decided to set off south to the next small port called
Sesimbra, some 30 miles distant. We weighed anchor at about noon and,
with no wind started the engine and motored off. After about 1 1/2 hours a
light breeze picked up, so we stopped the engine and had a very pleasant, if
slow sail southwards. It wasn't anywhere near as hot as
yesterday. Also being at sea helped and there was a cooler NW'ly wind
from the Atlantic.
After rounding a large headland, Cabo Espichel at
about 1800 hrs, the wind steadily picked up - and up - and up, and by the time
we were approaching the harbour of Sesimbra a full gale was blowing and we had
to furl up some of the genoa quickly before our final approach
into the harbour. About 10 mins later we furled up the genoa
completely and in a howling wind we entered the small harbour to
discover a tiny marina in the western corner. As we approached, very
close to the harbour wall, our rubber dinghy that we were towing flew in
the air, turned over and started being dragged under water. We had to turn
up to wind in this very restricted space, and with some difficulty
dragged the dinghy over, then pulled it up on deck and temporarily
lashed it down quickly. It was soon caught by a violent gust of wind, and
with a life of it's own it flipped up on the foredeck, but the lashing
held. As we were looking for a berth the wind was causing us to drift
rather closer to the harbour wall than I felt comfortable
with. Then the harbour master appeared on a pontoon and waved his arms
and pointed at a berth that we couldn't see. We rounded up into a very
restricted berth - in a very tight corner - with a gale blowing, and
without mishap were able to get alongside and tie her up quickly with
the help of the HM - who I nick-named Manuel, since he was just like Basil
Faulty's waiter. He was most helpful though, and as always in these
Portuguese marina, I was promptly marched off with ship's papers to fill out the
usual long-winded forms.
The place turned out to have a very new club house, with
the best showers on the coast (well, the drain was blocked in mine, but that's
normal for around here) AND an excellent restaurant upstairs in which we
decided to partake. It was a bit pricey, and we weren't sure what we were
ordering (I didn't have my reading glasses with me, and so Sylvie's
translation was all we had to go on). We didn't get what we expected, but
it was delicious anyway. We met a very pleasant Dutch couple in the
restaurant, who, as soon as I mentioned 'Manuel' the harbour master and Basil
Faulty (a British comedy show for any non-British reading), the Dutchman
immediately started wonderful impressions of the mad hotel owner with phrases
like " Don't mention the war"! Anyway, we ended up having a nightcap on
their yacht.
I've just added a couple of old pictures in below ,
since I hadn't taken any for a couple of days.
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