Friday 29^th February – Vila Real De Santo António - Alcoutim

37:28.241N 7:28.238W

Today turned into a fabulous hot and sunny day. 

This morning we wandered briefly around the town of Vila Real De Santo António – we really like it, it has a lovely feel to it, and we will come back here to explore a bit more.

However, we wanted to visit the area up the river, so this afternoon we travelled to the upper reaches of the Rio Guadiana (the river forming the border between Portugal and Spain) to Alcoutim, around 20 nautical miles upstream.

The tides meant we needed to move on today – as it was, we ended up punching the tide part of the way.

One of the hair-raising bits for me was getting under the suspension bridge.  I have always had kittens in our home port at Southampton when we had to go under the bridge to get fuel at Shamrock Quay, where the margin was over 8m, as the optical perspective from below as you approach is deceptive.  On this occasion the margin was only around 4m and it felt a lot less as we approached.

Soon after we passed under the suspension bridge we were off our electronic charts and using only the pilot book to find our way.  It was interesting to see that our electronic charts showed us merrily travelling a course over land parallel to the river!  We had to seek out the channel for best water – keeping to the centre of the river on the straights and the outside of the bends.

After the bridge, the river was very quiet for about 10 miles.  Then we started to see a few small villages and a couple of boats at anchor.  When we reached some of the small towns mentioned in the pilot book, we were surprised at there being quite a few yachts around, very clearly ‘live aboards’ who were over wintering there and we started to wonder if we would find space at Alcoutim.

At Alcoutim it is quite busy in the anchorage but we found space on one of the pontoons along with two other British boats who are very friendly.  We cannot believe it, but we’ve come all this way up river to find that we still have a pontoon with electricity, fresh water and wifi.

We arrived around 4.30pm and had a quick look around this small town.  We will explore further tomorrow.  Across from us is the town of Sanlùcar de Guadiana on the Spanish side.