After a lovely time in Figueria, Andrew had rejoined the boat after his bout of COVID and it was time to head off to our next port down the coast, Nazaré.
We were a little apprehensive about coming into Nazaré knowing that this is the place which has recorded the biggest waves in the world, but fortunately, our day of sailing saw near 0 swell.
We apparently forgot to start the Navionics track when leaving Figueria, so half of the route is missing below.
Of course there were more dolphins along the way, this time doing something rather interesting… I checked in with a marina mammal expert, and yes they may be doing what you are thinking while enjoying the bow wave of Hannah.
Due to the dropping wind in the evening, we had to motor the last couple of miles around the Nazaré headland and into the marina. Once again, we were entirely engulfed in fog.
We spent one of our free days before needing to get to Lisbon for Andrews flight here exploring on land.
That of course meant a trip to the headland to see the red lighthouse of Nazaré, the museum at the top as well as Praia do Norte from the headland. A shame there was no swell!
Andrew was still hauled up in a hotel after getting COVID in our somewhere between day 58 and 60. But the sailing must go on! (at least a little bit).
We had always planned on spending around a week in Figuera da Foz, so we continued down the coast to our next port.
It was roughly a 36 nautical mile sail which was mostly uneventful, but perhaps we would have been better setting off an hour or so earlier.
We didnt arrive until after dark, as as we approached the entrance to the river, fog decended. You can just about see the enterance to the river and harbour in the image below.
Arrival during fog
Annoyingly the marina in Figuera doesn’t allow pre allocation of berths, so we needed to both moor up at the visitor pontoon to register at reception before then also moooring up in our actual berth for the week. This was extra annoying due to the fog, wind and darkness.
The visitor pontoon was so large you could barely see Hannah hiding away behind the concrete.
Hannah moored up next to the concrete visitor pontoon
We spent most of our time in Figuera with friends and family. Rather than writing in detail about all of the wonderfull food that we ate and wine that we drank, instead I’ll just leave you with this collection of images to make you Jealous. (talking to Andrew here, as he missed out due to covid).
We also did a few boat maintenance jobs while in the marina for a week and while also having access to a sewing machine. We also got some things delivered that we needed to collect!
This included:
Modifications to our V berth pillow, including a new cover
Creation of fender covers out of tracksuit bottoms
It looked like it was going to be a windy sail on leaving the safe harbour of Porto so we went with one reef in the main sail and the genoa had a little furl in, and the mizzen up in full.. the perfect set up really as we shot along at 8.5knots with a following swell that got us up to 9 or even 10 knots on occasion.
The race was on to catch up with SV Blue Note! Who we could see on AIS, we were catching up with speed.
A couple of hours or so in, the wind had dropped off just a little so all of the sail went up to try to maintain our speed, and we managed a very modest 6 or so knots for a few more hours
Half way through our sail we were on track to catch Blue Note just as we entered Aveiro.
The excitement however, started to diminish as our speed got slower and slower, the wind was really tailing off as the day drew on and we realised we were not going to catch up 🙁
Instead we finally got to the anchorage at about 11pm and we passed Blue Note on our lap of the anchorage trying to find a space, looked like they had packed up and gone to bed! The race will have to continue another day
The anchorage was packed out with sailing boats and we actually had difficulty finding a good spot so we ended up very close to a car ferry channel
In the morning after a few boats had left we were able to move to a better spot and not feel like we were in the path of all the little fishing boats coming and going
SV Blue Note went on their way and we said goodbye to them as the customs police came along side to check our documents, they were nice and chatty and liked our new paint job and told us about a good bakery, we also asked the story behind the giant wrecked trimaran that we were anchored next to.
Apparently some years ago it was being sailed by its French owners not far offshore from the harbour we were in when it was dismasted, it came in but the insurance didn’t pay out so it lay there dormant slowly being picked at by thieves till all that was left was a hull (or three really!) and it’s engine which the police said only hasn’t been stolen due to it being too heavy to get out of the boat!
The small town was interesting, it used to be purely made up of a naval base and ship building yard, and everyone who lived there worked in one or the other, over time the ship building yard became derelict, we walked around the dilapidated buildings trying to figure out what it used to be, for some time, eventually after translating some signs and finding some paperwork from the 1970s we realized it was a ship building yard
Nowadays it looks like some people use the spaces to hang out and there were some cool looking graffiti sprays on the walls.
We arrived in the early morning of the 16th of August (the day of Daisy’s flight). @sv_bluenote were anchored in the river, as we cruised in and headed toward the marina, planning on staying there for a night or two.
Even though it was early there was someone at the marina to show us to a berth, and we ended up being pretty close to sv_zoe.
It was Daisy’s last day with us, and we made the most of it by seeing some sights in Porto, eating a very yummy Francesinha, and having some drinks on the river, then much to Daisy’s excitement, we rode electric scooters back to the marina along the river side all before it was time for her to taxi to the airport. There was only some minor running involved to get her and her bags to the taxi on time!
I’m glossing over the fact for the longest time Daisy was convinced her flight was on the 17th (next day). Glad we checked, otherwise she would have had a rather sad arrival to the check-in desk.
The next day the remaining 3 of us spent most of the day working, battling with the pretty slow WiFi at the marina.
The marina did redeem themselves from the WiFi though as it came with a free port tasting for each of us at Churchill’s, which we made the most of in the afternoon. €45 worth of free port tasting in fact, with a tour of the various port cellars and giant 55,000L port barrels, which was essentially the price of one of the nights stay in the marina! We did of course try a few more ports than came in the free tasting!… 15 tasting glasses later we stumbled home.
After our second and final night in the marina we spent much of the day working and doing laundry before heading to anchor in the river with sv_bluenote who had invited us for dinner.
It was so delicious I forgot to take a picture, but it was a lovely creamy risotto with asparagus.
But we did snap these pictures of Hannah in the sunset from Blue Note.
We planned on doing a night sail all the way down to Figuera da Foz that same night, but shortly after arriving back from dinner Andrew said he wasn’t feeling so good.
We hunted around to find the thermometer, only to find it was out of battery.
On a whim we got Andrew to do a covid test, and quite surprisingly he was positive!!!
Needless to say, we didn’t start to sail, instead staying anchored for the night.
Come morning Andrew decided it would be best to head to a hotel for his first covid experience rather than stay on small old Hannah, so we shipped him to shore in the dinghy.
Andrew headed to a hotel, and Kathryn and I prepared to chase Blue Note down…
We quickly pulled up anchor once we had the dinghy back on board and scoffed some food down whilst motoring out of the river, trying to chase Blue Note down who had left a couple of hours ago, but let’s save that for the next post!
