Welly's wanderings: PORTUGAL

PORTUGAL

We stayed in Baiona a couple of days longer than we planned. First we found an electrician to have a look at the Solar panel and do a temporary repair on it (still in our quest to find ways to put power into the batteries especially as with no fridge we have warm beer/wine and the long life milk goes off after a day or two). Then the day we got up to leave there was thick fog which didn’t clear until after lunch so it was a little late to leave by then so we had to postpone till the following day. The fog was thick the following morning also but we managed to get away at 12 noon.

The boat next to us in the fog! We delayed leaving!

12 September 09
Viana Do Castelo

We motored all the way down the coast as the wind (what there was of it) was on the nose, this is an expensive business so we hope the wind will come back from the North as it is supposed to do round here! It took 8 hours to motor down to Viana do Castelo in Portugal and we raised the Portuguese flat on crossing the border, and celebrated our crossing with a beer.

Raising the Portuguese Flag

The problem with these Portuguese places is most places don’t allow you to anchor. We have gotten used to the 3 D’s, Destination arrival, Drop anchor, Drink beer, so having to mess around with fenders and warps and tie up, then take official papers to the marina office, wait around, then possibly get a beer and the worse thing of all ........they then make you pay! Hence we just stayed overnight so didn’t get to see much of the place but it looked like a nice town and we are told it is lovely if you like looking at churches. So we took a walk around the town that evening and looked at a few bars and very nice they were to (we did see some churches also looking nice in the dark).

Viana de Castelo (you can just make out 3 churches just in this picture).

An old hospital ship on display (Gil Eannes) which would have been interesting to look around if we had stayed.

The wind was very light again the next morning, so more motoring. Although we have seen very little traffic along this route, the bain of our life is the pot buoys. They litter the whole coast and we have to keep a fairly sharp look out to make sure we don’t run into one and get caught up in it. Even when we were in 40m of water fairly well off the coast they were still turning up

Pot buoys everywhere!

Povoa de Varzim

Next stop Povoa de Varzim, a little harbour about 6 hours down the coast were we found a spot to anchor, the marina lads were madly waving at us as we were anchorning and so we pretended we did'nt see them as they clearly did'nt want us to anchor were we did. Anyway they eventually gave up and went away. The town is listed in the pilot book as being a seaside town but apart from the sea front it has a lovely old part and an interesting fishing history. We also can get a metro straight into Porto from here to see the Port distilleries, only for education you understand.