Lexios - Cascais

Trippwire
Sun 4 Oct 2009 17:30
Aghh...enough of my mooring prowess.....to continue...
 
Lexios marina turned out to be on the corner of a commercial port and opposite the fish dock, which meant that the whole place stank of fish and the water was full of fish scraps and dead fish. Dorset cereal does not taste quite the same when eaten alongside the aroma of rotting fish! After going through the very detailed check in procedure of the Portuguese police, we had a wander around the local area with the aim of getting something to eat. The guide book suggested that the locals came to this area to eat and go clubbing....if they do, we definitely did not find the right places, with the whole area seeming a little dark and sinister! So after a less than fruitful 2 hour walk around it was now 10pm and we decided to go back to the boat to eat, when we came across a McDonalds just 300 metres from the marina entrance...perfect..particularly given that it served beer! 
 
Wednesday's agenda was to hit the port houses. So, after our rotting fish aromered cereal we headed into town. Porto is a fantastic place, with a very pretty old town centered on the river Duoro. The port growing region is more than 100 miles up river and the port used to be shipped down river to Porto where it was put into the casks to mature. After a very cursory glance at the old town, we headed across the river to the port. First stop was Grahams. A fantastic tour, followed by a tasting, followed by another tasting and an vintage port tasting resulted in a bit of a 'purchase'.....done whilst Jennifer was temporarily taking a break from the tastings....when she got back, Miles was in trouble! We then went on to a tour of Taylors, which we were not as impressed with, and Miles was firmly chaperoned through the whole process!
 
Looking at the pilot, there is not much between Porto and Cascais, and we could see some fairly strong southwester lies coming in, and so we decided to head straight down to Cascais, which is next door to Lisbon. Had a huge school of dolphin (at least 100) (I still dont know whether they were dolphin or porpoise...I am sure that there is someone rather more educated than I who will enlighten me...but for the sake of this, they are dolphin!) come to play with us for more than an hour, which was magical...lots of squeaking and swimming on their sides so that they could get a better look at us. We tried 2 hour watches, but have decided that they don't work - you spend more time getting up and down than sleeping/watching. Again we had very little wind and so had to motor all the way. So far we have only got 2 hours of sailing in since Corunna, which is very boring, but we were chatting to some people who have spent 6 weeks coming down the north Spanish and Portuguese coast and they have only had 2 hours as well - there is a total lack of the usual northerly trade winds, which is a bit of a concern for the Madeira leg. We ended up in thick fog during the night...Radar has stopped working, but had the AIS going, which was brilliant, particularly when on my watch a very loud fog horn sounded from what seemed like only feet from our bows, which in normal times would have been terrifying, but with the AIS, we knew that it was going to pass safely behind (albeit only a few hundred meters).
 
 
No apologies if there are too many dolphin photos for your liking.....as you can see, we were very excited by them (and I was pretty impressed by my photographic prowess to go alongside my mooring prowess....I think that my sister will almost certainly disagree, particularly with the knowledge that I have only just learnt how to turn the camera on!)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
We arrived at Cascais early in on Friday morning and clocked into the marina. Our plan was just to spend 24 hours here, on the basis that the southerlies were forecast for today and thought that we would get down to the Algarve. Cascais is a great place and so we have decided to spend a few days here - they have kite surfing going on on a local beach for me, as well as surfing for Jen, and if all else fails, Lisbon is a 1/2 hour train ride away. We therefore moved out of the Marina and are now anchored up in the bay, which is a much better setting.
 
 
Jen & Miles

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