Atlantic Ocean - Olá from Portugal

Our trip going from Spain to Portugal was a little bit more challenging this time.

You may remember that we anchored at the Cies Island (Galacian Atlantic Island in the Terrestrial National Park). It was quite windy overnight and the anchor alarm went off twice due to us not setting radius large enough..The boat did 180 degrees swings but anchor was solid. We took off after lunch thinking if would be an easy sail to the Marina in Viana do Castelo (Portugal). We rang ahead and a berth was confirmed. We arrived at 6 pm and had one look at the allocated space and knew that we would not be able to fit.

After not being able to stay at the booked marina we looked for an anchor spot outside but the only safe place had a no anchorage sign on the map. There were no other suitable or protected spots nearby. We quickly had to make a decision since we did not want to arrive in the dark in a new place with these high swells. Lucky for us there is still some light until 10 pm at the moment so we had a little bit of time left.

We did a quick calculation to our next possible spot being the Marina da Povoa de Varzim approx. another 20 nm away. We were confident that we could make it there before dark. We read that the entry is pretty tricky during windy weather and for us beginners really not something we wanted to attempt at night. Well as it was pretty windy we watched the entrance to get a pattern of the large swells and waves and looked at best way to enter (photo and explanation later).

The Portugal coast heading from North to South until Porto has lots of fishing nets marked by small flags. These flags (or sometimes just fallen over sticks or just floating items) are sometimes difficult to spot during the day but nearly impossible to spot during the night. At one occasion we had to put engine quickly into neutral (we have a folding prop) to not drag an unmarked fishing net with us and cause problems to our prop. None of use would want to jump into the freezing water in these conditions!

There have been numerous reports of Orcas attacking yachts and "playing" with their rudders along the coastline of Portugal and Spain - so far no sightings (fingers crossed).

In Portugal we stopped in: da Povoa de Varz, Porto, Da Figueira de Foz, Nazare and Lisbon. Next planned stop is Sines and then a few lovely looking anchor spots along the coast.

Our plan is to arrive in Gibraltar in approx 14 days to install our solar panels.

We often discussed how difficult it must have been for the sailors / explorers hundreds of years ago and even in more recent times when there were no GPS and other of todays modern technologies available,

Below is a picture of us leaving Cies Island - Portugal (Galacian Atlantic Island in the Terrestrial National Park)

Below a photo of some fishing net markers. With big waves they can be difficult to spot in particular if some marker parts are missing.

Below is a photo of our entry into Marina da Povoa de Varzim - normally the GPS shows a red constant line of our path. However as we had some swell pushing us in the lines had different colours indicating the speed we got pushed in, Skipper Sven had to "surf" the boat and stayed really calm. He asked crew member (deck hand/cook/provisioning /weather forecaster/below deck cleaner/hanky-panky lady) to tell him to watch his back and advise when the next swell pushed us so he could concentrate looking forward. Caroline would say: "swell coming - three, two, one, surf.... " This approach worked fine and we surfed in between the two breaking walls. We are sure that there will be many more exciting entries to come...

Making the best of a rainy day, long but pleasant journey.

The fashion at da Povoa de Varz was certainly different than in the bigger villages. We did an overnight stay.

What does one do when arriving in Porto? Well try some Porto's of course.

We did not think that we would be able to drink them all, however since we had time there was no issue with it as you can clearly see below.

We walked a lot in Porto exploring the town and eating some lovely food.

Enjoyed Porto, pretty town.

The colourful buildings and the Portuguese Street musicians gave this place a wonderful atmosphere.

Back at the boat we were treated with a beautiful view of the bridge and surroundings and sat outside a bit longer to take it all in. Life is good.

Next day in Porto we wandered to the local markets and noticed ladies with their wet washing walking around (it was already raining so I guess did not really matter)

On closer inspection we realised that there is a Public Laundry where the ladies could wash their items by hand and socialise. What a great idea - we loved that ! See facilities below. In the back outside you can also see the "communal washing lines". It looked like below is for 4 people - each of them had a pre-wash and wash basin and fresh water dripping in from the top in the middle.

Ahh and as in other parts of Europe, the Portuguese also have lovely "Pasteleria". But looking at their huge "Mil-folhas" - surely it would be messy to eat and we opted for something less complicated.

After a stop in Da Figueira da Foz we headed to Nazare. Nazare has the biggest surfing waves in the world (30 Metre waves). However after some research we found out that the big waves season is from October to March (winter season) and in some years plus 1 month on either side. When you sail into the port (which is just in the next bay from the big waves spot), you can see a sudden and impressive water depth drop on the boat depth indicator.

The Nazare underwater canyon is the largest submarine canyon in Europe reaching depth of 5000 metres and a length of about 230 kilometres. If you are into Surfing you must watch some you tube videos of these monster waves. Unbelievable.

Below is the walk from boat to the hill climb to see the surfer spot. The sticking out rocks on top impressed us in particular as some buildings were built not far off the cliff. Will these break off in time? There is a walk up or transport available.

These elderly ladies in picture below were selling dried fish (also see following picture). In the back you can also see what they call the "escalator" for people who did not want to to walk up the hill and see the waves. Which we clearly wanted to do after being on the boat for so many hours that day.

Dried fish for sale along the beach.

We can only imagine how touristy Nazare must be without Covid and during the summer holiday season. There were still many people selling so many items along the beach and with the missing travellers we felt so sorry for them.

Many elderly women were also just sitting there with signs saying "room to rent"

We enjoyed the walk up the hill. You can see the Nazare Marina entry at the back where we left our boat. We walked down on the other side of the mountain to check out this famous surfer spot and then all back home again to eat a well deserved dinner at a local simple restaurant,

This is the Lazare surfer look out spot which is buzzing when the waves are big and provides a 360 degrees view.

This is the surfer spot with 30 metres waves during winter. These are very tame compared to the online surfer videos you can watch of Nazare

The entry to the wave look out spot was 1 Euro and worth it. They had films, explanation why these big waves occur, boards of people who surfed there etc.

We stopped in Lisbon to fix some boat warranty items. Below is not the Golden Gate Bridge in SF but the entry into Lisbon.

We arrived in our winter gear including our long skiing underwear. It was 27 degrees when we arrived. Time for a wash and hopefully store the winter clothes and warm jackets/pants away for a while?

Lucky for us there were very few tourists around and we had the tourist spots pretty

much to ourselves.

Dinner in Lisboa (we are always the first ones eating...)

Sorry for the unedited video below of dolphins playing around our boat.

More from us soon.