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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