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Tarifa to the Canaries

Tarifa to the Canaries

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After waiting out all of the wind, we were finally ready to set off across the Gibraltar straight to our next destination.

We hadn’t decided if we were going to stop at Tangier or not, as we had heard from some friends that it was going to be full, so also had a plan to head all the way to Rabat.

Not long after setting off we quickly got the rod out as Kathryn saw a giant tuna leaping out of the sea. Within a few minutes, there was a bite, and we spent the next 15 minutes (it felt like) reeling in our catch whilst underway.

A tuna! Our first catch since northern Spain (we think).

As we approached Tangier we saw a whole bunch of boats leaving. This was the moment that we started re-evaluating weather options as well as considering how long customs can take in Morocco.

Rather than stop in Tangier, as we were a week behind our plan, we decided to keep going to either Rabat, Essaouira or the Canaries.

Very quickly we found ourselves 3 days into a 5-day sail.

Throughout our sail along the coast of northern Morocco, there was quite a lot of sand in the air, making everything very hazy, kind of like fog.

The weather dropped and shifted, making it look unlikely we could make it to the Canaries before getting caught in the worst of some horrible swell. As the weather continued to develop we were weighing up Essaouira, Agadir or Lanzarote. Also, playing in the sea 😉

The wind shifted back to something more desirable, as we went for it, all the way to Lanzarote!

While talking about how we might be able to go faster with the wind almost directly behind us, we realized that we had not yet used the mizen staysail.

It’s meant for use when the wind is from the beam to almost dead behind the boat, so perfect!

We spent some time figuring out how to hoist it for the first time, and up it went.

We kept the mizen staysail up for at least 1 day, and it managed to keep our average speed at above 6knots. Epic!

This was the point where we saw a large navy ship behind us. Adam also realized that we weren’t listening on channel 16 (we had switched to listen to some weather, but never heard the broadcast).

Upon switching back to channel 16, the navy ship was hailing us (they might have been for some time…).

They wanted to know the details of the boat, how many people were aboard, and if we had any kids of pets. After a lovely little VHF conversation, they said to have a nice sail and then continued on past us.

The wind and swell continued to build, the staysail came down, and we continued the rest of the sail with a reefed main and a working gib.

In the last 12 hours the swell was probably somewhere between 2 and 3 meters, and quite mixed up. There was a primary swell from the north at 2-2.7m, but also some other swell from somewhere east or south ish that made things quite interesting…

The worst of this came at night, but here is a short video from the daytime before, where we capture the swell size quite well we think.

We came in between Lanzarote and the northern island of La Graciosa at about 5am on Saturday, before getting to our anchorage at 6am ish.

The moon was quite full, but unfortunately obscured by clouds so it was quite dark.

The anchorage was full of boats, but we snuck around all of them right to the front next to the beach and dropped anchor in what we hoped was sand according to the satellite view. We held well and headed for some well-deserved sleep! (pictures of where our anchor landed coming in the next post)

Overall our track looked something like this!

Fun in Cadiz

Fun in Cadiz

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After a night under the suspension bridge, we made our way to a marina for some much-needed tlc.

We are getting better at this slip mooring, everyone else makes it look so easy in their boats with bow thrusters and controlled steerage in reverse! Neither of which Hannah Penn has! But after an uneventful docking we were able to have a real shower and Hannah was able to have her salty deck hosed down too, a nice and cooling thing to do as the heat was almost unbearable, luckily there was a bit of wind so we forced some air through the boat with the scoop

That evening after it started to cool down we ventured out on the hunt for fresh fruit and veg, not far into our journey we noticed that the place was packed out with cars parked literally everywhere! And wondered if there was a big event happening

Soon we heard a brass band playing in the distance and went to find out what was going on, we discovered this band playing and watched for a while before moving on, still wondering if they just practise here or if there was something more going on

We walked through the old part of Cadiz, it’s a beautiful historic city with strong religious ties, which we discovered in the form of a celebration festival depicting scenes from the Bible and Jesus’s life and death, each scene was like a mobile shrine which was guided through the streets each with its own brass band and many people guiding it with lot candles

They all arrived in the main square in view of thousands of onlookers, it was even televised and we saw people watching it from pins and bars nearby

After trying to see all the different scenes, which there were about 10 moving slower than a snail! We quickly hurried to a shop outside of all the chaos of people to find some dinner, it’s safe to say we didn’t make it in time to do a proper shop as was planned! With a couple of mins to choose some food before they closed for the night, we found some things to make sandwiches and ate it all at the side of the street!

After the evening’s excitement, we wandered home along the waterfront, where there was a park with some of the most amazing trees I’ve ever seen

One of many ancient trees in the park

The next day we got on with a few boat jobs including one which we had been putting off for a while…cleaning and replacing the plug/handle of an underwater sea cock because it had seized up and couldn’t be closed.

We will write about this in a separate post as it might be quite interesting for other folks with these seacocks.

A job well done and we didn’t fill the engine bay with too much water in doing so.

Gibraltar and the Monkeys

Gibraltar and the Monkeys

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The marina we chose was the last resort after trying the other marinas first who said they were full for our chosen days, to our surprise though it was the best marina we’ve ever been to! And what really did make it awesome was the bathrooms, it’s funny how you take something so mundane for granted when you live in a house. Well, this marina had home-from-home private bathrooms with his and hers double sinks, waterfall showers and two even had huge bathtubs, which we obviously made the most of! We didn’t get a perfect picture of the baths, but you can see a screenshot from a video to the right.

The staff were great, and the marina was all being fully renovated with new pontoons installed in 2020, so it was all very shmancy but also surprisingly cheap.

You can read our full review on Navily.

We had a bit of confusion booking, we both emailed but got no reply (our email went to spam) and called, but got not email confirmation after. Upon arriving we had 2 bookings! Luckily we only paid for 1 😉

On approach to the marina be carefull not to stray into the runway approach as the port channel markers are not currently in the water. The satalite view on maps show this as Mediterranean moorings, however we were alongside a pontoon, and other around us had fingers. We were right outside reception.

The marina is well located, a middle sized supermarket selling Tesco products open every day, and a 15 minuite walk away a giant Morrisons. Water and electricity is included in the mooring fee, and for a 11.5m monohull we paid £28 a night for 5 nights. There is construction work going on around but we didn’t find it annoying. Lots of restaurants and places to have a drink. Shepard’s chandelry is awesome, we went there at least 5 times while doing various boat jobs. The staff are very helpful. There are laundry facilities in the building next to reception. £4.50 for washing, £1.50 for drying. Also a vending machine with some cold drinks.

Fuel was cheap at £1.19 /L for Diesel from Gib oil a few meters from the marina reception. We got some as we left the marina. As everyone else said the bathrooms are great, make use of the baths!!! (In Alpha and Beta). 10/10, would head there again

The grand tin reorganization

While in Gibraltar we took some time restocking our dry goods and tin collection from the nearby Morrisons, this included some home comforts from the UK 🙂

At the same time, we took an inventory of all food aboard, ready for some longer crossings and to avoid needing to dig around to find things in the various storage compartments.

So many tins! We think we could probably live quite happily for a few months with this stockpile and also not get scurvy.

On top of this, we have a few KGs of pasta, rice, couscous, lentils, quinoa, noodles etc.

We spent a little time doing boat jobs.

On our last voyage into Gibraltar the bolts that hold our wind turbine in place had once again come undone despite having sent Andrew up the mast a few weeks back to do them up very tight. Our bolts went overboard this time, so we needed to locate some new bolts, and locking washers to try to keep the wind turbine attached to its mount.

We spent some time going along the steering shaft oiling and greasing all of the appropriate parts. This shaft runs from the wheel in the cockpit, down the port side of the boat through various compartments, bearings and angeled joints to the rudder stock.

Here you can see part of the shaft closest to the wheel with the autopilot in view, and the chain that allows it to steer the boat. (Perhaps we should do an autopilot tour soon)

Of course, a marina trip wouldn’t be complete without some land exploration and good food.

We ate out a few nights of our overall 5-night stay having some tasty Italian, fajitas, cocktails, fish and chips, meat skewers, burgers etc.

This included a hop back into Spain where we caught a bus all the way to Marbella which is slightly further east into the Mediterranean, to make use of a voucher at a restaurant that Adam had acquired.

We also headed up “the rock” to take in some amazing views and to watch the monkeys at sunset.

Faro exploration

Faro exploration

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We arrived late to Faro, after dark and our chosen anchorage was a little way up river so instead of motoring through shallow unknown waters in the dark we found the first suitable spot and dropped anchor for the first night, we were well out of the way of the main channel although later we found out that the shallow draft of many of the ferries meant that they can take a short cut right past us

In the morning we made our way further into the river system where we found maybe 50 boats anchored, still the area was very large and we found ourselves a nice spot in Calutra

I decided that I wanted to see the Benagil Caves now that we were on the south coast but unfortunately, we had passed them earlier in our sail to Faro, after a quick look at the winds we decided the best thing was to get a train there instead of sailing back again!

Getting to the train turned out to be a bit of a feat in itself, as we first had to take the dinghy to the nearest harbour, Calutra, and then a Ferry, which we couldn’t get a ticket for (due to a language misunderstanding!) We then got on the wrong ferry thinking it was the only way so we stayed on it for over an hour whilst it took us to another port first, then we finally made it to a place with a train station but the next train to Faro wasn’t for over an hour again! And all that was before getting the actual train from Faro to the caves. You can see the crazy route we took below.

Anyway, a few hours later we finally made it to the caves to find out the swell was a bit bigger than expected and they had stopped running the boat tours inside the caves, we did, however, get to see them from above and had a great cliff top walk which included seeing ‘Elephant Rock’ and a number of other cool caves and rocky outcrops before ending up at a beach surrounded by big cliffs and sea stacks.

Getting back we thought was going to be more straightforward now that we knew what ferries ran to where, however, we were too late to get the last one back!! Oops

So stuck in Faro our choice was to find somewhere to stay there or get a €60 water taxi, we decided why not make the most of it and get a room in Faro! The place we found had a pool too so we spent some time relaxing before getting the ferry back the next day

Little Han (the dinghy) and Hannah were just as we’d left them, luckily we’d thought we might be back after dark so had left the anchor light on anyway and as we had been at anchor there for a couple of nights already, without budging we didn’t feel too uncomfortable leaving the boat on its own at anchor overnight for the first time

Day 82-83: Sesimbra to Sines, well actually let’s carry on to Faro

Day 82-83: Sesimbra to Sines, well actually let’s carry on to Faro

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A standard day sail or so we thought when we left Sesimbra, the sail started off fairly slow with less than 10knots of wind, a gorgeous day for sailing and relatively flat calm seas.

We made lots of Instagram stories of this adventure, so you can watch the complication below which includes spoilers, or come back to it at the end.

As the sea was so flat and we wanted to make good time we thought it would be a great opportunity to try hoisting the dinghy on a halyard to sit alongside the hull of the boat instead of being either dragged along behind (slowing us down a little) or deflating it, which is effort!

So I got in ‘Little Han’ whilst we sailed along and fashioned a bridle so we could hoist her up with relatively even pressure

And a little while later we had a nicely working hoist with fenders and support lines so it didn’t move around.

As we carried on through our sail we checked the weather (again) this usually occurs about 6 times a day especially when we don’t write down what the forecast actually said! But this time it was in response to a message received from Adam’s Mum with a link to an approaching storm, one which we knew would be hitting us within a couple of days.

According to Público, Hurricane Danielle changed its course and will hit Portugal on 11 and 12 September, bringing rain and strong wind. The hurricane proved to have an uncertain route and has now included Portugal in the route; however, its classification will change once it reaches Portugal.

Storm coming to Portugal – theportugalnews.com

So after discussing in detail if the anchorage we were approaching would give us appropriate protection, we did agree that it would be fine.. however, it would leave us trapped there for probably 3 days as leaving it soon after the storm passed over would have meant sailing through an unwelcome sea state (3-meter swell!.. no thanks!)

As we were sailing along pretty nicely now we looked at alternatives and getting to Faro sprang to mind, about 120 miles further than the 30 we expected to be sailing that day! The overall track was rather long and varied.

The afternoon wind picked up and we were cruising along on our fastest point of sail, a Beam Reach at 7-8knots, it was really the first time in at least a month we have had really fast sailing conditions, so thought may as well carry on as we should have good wind all night!

As night drew in so did the swell, it wasn’t too bad as the wind picked up a little more too which is actually a good thing when there’s swell as it stops the boat from rolling into the wind as much when you come down off a swell wave

My night watch started at about 2am and everything had been going smoothly, about half an hour in we were getting faster and faster, and I shone a light at the anemometer, it said 33knots, I thought that’s rather a lot to have no reefs in, but being still on a beam reach means the boat doesn’t heal as much as close hauled so it’s more comfortable in stronger winds, still I needed to choose to do something as the wind waves were picking up too the options were to reef the sails (had already taken the mizzen down earlier) which is hard work in the night, or turn down wind further, away from our destination but as we were going so fast a few extra miles didn’t make much difference

Adam had woken up by this point saying he felt the vibrations in the hull and asked if we were going faster!

We decided the best action would just be to turn down wind a little which makes it seem like there’s less wind as your going more in the same direction as it

At that point there was a crack and the sound of metal running over the fiberglass deck, I shone the torch outside trying to see what had broken, Adam got out of bed to help, luckily all it turned out to be was the jib forestay which is usually lashed down out of the way when not in use had worn through the lashing, but now was wildly swing around in the wind from the top of the mast, it hit the windscreen and got caught on the windscreen wiper.. just long enough to grab it so it couldn’t cause any more damage, this time I took something more substantial to hold it down, a couple of shackles will do the trick.

I donned my lifejacket and went out into what was turning into a bit of a stormy night to secure it to the deck whilst Adam shone a torch on me all the time!

So with that minor inconvenience sorted out he went back to bed and I carried on with my watch

5am came around and it was almost time for me to have a snooze but not before a wave hit us a bit differently to all the others and knocked the dinghy half out of its bridle, it was now half dragging in the water. We had to put a lasso of rope around the far back tip of the dinghy, turns out our Little Han is not so little when your trying to lean out over the side of the boat to throw a rope around its far side, so with some boat hooking and heaving it up higher it was finally back on and well supported.. time for a sleep 💤

As we rounded the southern corner of Portugal and got into the Lee of the land in the morning the wind subsided as did the swell and we quickly slowed down to a crawl, so time to change the sails again! It was cruising chute weather. (This also looked pretty cool due to the shadow cast by the mast)

We love using our cruising chute now it’s got a sock to be hoisted in, it means you can hoist it without it filling with wind so much less likely to damage the delicate light airs sail

By midday we had both snoozed enough to catch up on the sleep, we’d just missed out on!

The water looked so inviting and knowing it had to be at least be a little warmer than where we were previously I decided it would be a good idea to jump in whilst we sailed along!

We threw one our big fenders out the back on a long line to grab hold of and I threw myself in, the cool water was not as freezing as it was in Spain where I couldn’t even stand it even in a winter wetsuit so we jumped in and out a few times and as the boat was going slowly we could even have a swim next to the boat and not be left behind!

We even took some underwater pics and a video of the hull.. which we are due to clean now that the water is more barrable! Looks at all that gunge 😱

So with all the day’s excitement over we eventually made it to our anchorage not long after sunset and with a few hours of lovely calm sailing before getting there we had the boat all wrapped up in sail covers and tidied up before we anchored, even teeth cleaned so all we had to do was drop anchor, set an anchor drag alarm and get into a well-deserved bed

Day 77: Lisbon (ish)

Day 77: Lisbon (ish)

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From Cascais it was only a 5nm sail to our chosen marina near Lisbon, we hoisted the mainsail whilst still at anchor and sailed like a pro out through the other anchored boats quickly unfurling the genoa too

The sea and sky were kind and with lake-like seas, we sped toward Lisbon, this was Andrews’s final day of sailing and it was going to be a fun one, early that morning we had seen a pirate ship approach our anchorage and drop the hook a little way offshore, the ship was huge and could have easily been taken right out of Pirates of the Caribbean! We looked it up online to find that it likely had around 75 people on board, what was funny was that it also had two washing machines and dryers on board too, the luxuries of pirate living!

As we sailed out towards it we tried to get as close as possible to get a good look at it and take some pictures, we waved at everyone on deck.. sadly not a single one waved back! 

But anyway we did get some great pics of it

As we carried on we decided the conditions were perfect for Andrew to do some single-handed sailing, with and without the use of the autopilot, so first I demonstrated how to tack the boat and change the sails without using the autopilot to hold the wheel and then we handed the boat over to Andrew to have a go doing everything himself, he did a very good job at being quick enough to not let the boat tack back again after transferring the headsail to the other side whilst not holding the wheel!

We also tried to sail a circle which obviously had some tacking included but really not a bad effort! You can look at our track on the map

After we had had enough of that Andrew announced that he hadn’t been in the water the entire time he’d been on board!! A whole month on board and he hadn’t dipped his toes in! We had completely forgotten about that as the water before this point had been pretty cold oh and he did get covid for a little bit too :0, so we sailed a little further from shore and decided to ‘heave to’ (stall the boat under sail, like anchoring with no anchor) and drift whilst we all had fun jumping in.

However, not long before we were going to jump in we spotted something in the water that stopped any of us from getting in the water!.. jellyfish and lots of them.

I wanted to get a good picture of the interestingly shaped jellyfish so I jumped in the dinghy with the underwater camera and snapped a few of these, apparently, this is a very common jellyfish found off the coast of Portugal with a moderate sting. We think it is a Catostylus tagi.

We probably spent 40mins admiring the jellyfish before we stopped seeing them.. no time like the present we thought so got into a swimming costume and we all jumped in the sea, Adam and I even tried to halyard swing into the water with some pretty funny results… (you can judge who is best)

So 11.5nm later we arrived at the marina, radioed in, and got a space, luckily the conditions were good as the space they had given us was very tight! With lots of fenders out on both sides, we edged our way into the slip and had a nice little relax before going to check in and find the shower block!

We headed into Lisbon via taxi in the evening to have a final meal with Andrew.

On the way back, we did some much-needed exercise after a big meal and lots to drink!

Day 75-76: Cascais

Day 75-76: Cascais

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Day 75 saw us heading to Cascais. This was the moment we turned the first “corner” on the west coast of Portugal.

The anchorage was large and there was plenty of room for us right in the middle.

That evening we headed to shore to explore what Cascais had to offer and to find some food.

Once again, as keeps happening at many of our ports of call, there was a festival happening.

We stayed in Cascais for 2 days, as long ago during the planning of the trip Kathryn had seen a place called Quinta de Regaleria that looked rather awesome, and we had to check it out.

This meant a short taxi to Sintra and a day spent surrounded by more tourists than any of us have seen in a while.

Day 63-70: Figuera da Foz

Day 63-70: Figuera da Foz

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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
  • Finishing the cruising chute sock
  • Started recaulking the deck

More on all of those in future blog posts. (checkout the Boat Things category)

Andrew rejoined us a day or so before heading out of Figuera, but the rest of the coast is for future posts.

Day 58-60: Porto

Day 58-60: Porto

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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!

Day 55-57: North of Porto

Day 55-57: North of Porto

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In the last episode of the sailing blog we entered Portugal! Next stop Porto, where we say goodbye to Daisy.

Caminha cont.

We were planning on hopping to another anchorage down the coast but decided to have a day of exploration and relaxation instead.

The beach was lovely and long, and the sun was out. Needless to say we didn’t manage to walk the multiple kms of the entire length but instead got distracted trying to make our very own TikTok… (yes we know we are behind the trend but it’s still hilarious!)

@sailinghannahpenn

We had to try and recreate one of our favourite TikToks for the first post on this account. Checkout the Instagram and blog for more serious sailing content. #foryoupage #avidikadivi #avidikidivi #portugal #beach #sailinglife

♬ original sound – DJHUNTS

And of course, the very tasty BBQ that I already mentioned in the previous post.

Journey to Póvoa de Varzim

Next stop, Póvoa de Varzim, a 37 nautical mile venture south.

We needed to time leaving the river at the point of least tidal flow which happened to be early in the morning.

I’ll avoid putting the exact time here, as to be honest I’m not sure. We had tide schedules in Azores summertime while being on the border of Portugal and Spain.. confusing, to say the least!

The tide dictated our exit from the river, and this put us out to sea without much wind. This led to a very wiggly and slow venture out to sea, before the wind swung and started to pick up guiding us toward our goal.

The sailing part of this hop was rather uneventful.

The fishing however was very interesting…

Catching a lobster pot

In the hour after leaving the river mouth, we came very close to a lobster pot buoy that was also connected to 2 other small buoys. We managed to mostly avoid the small buoys with the boat, however, the fishing line that was out at the time got snagged on a line between the 2 smaller buoys.

To retrieve our tackle we had to tack around, turn on the engine and approach the buoys with the motor on, managing to grab them out of the water and cut the needed bits of line.

Upon untangling the mess of line from our own lures, we found that we had acquired another hook with some line attached that must be from another boat that had got snagged on the same small buoys in the previous days.

Catching a seagull

About halfway through the journey, the line started reeling out a little then stopping. Almost like a fish bite that didn’t get hooked. It happened again and at the same time, Daisy said “What’s that seagull doing”.

Our lure must have caught some weed and surfaced, only to have a seagull dive on the lure thinking it was some tasty fishy food.

The engine went on once again, and another tack back to reel in this seagull without actually reeling it in and causing too much damage. We managed to pull the seagull out of the water, cover its head with a towel and slowly remove 2 hooks from it, one in the beak and one in its wing.

The caught seagul

After giving its wounds a rinse down with some sterile eyewash we put it on the foredeck and it quickly took flight heading for land, poor seagull, luckily we think it will be fine.

Póvoa de Varzim

Finally arriving in Póvoa de Varzim we were informed that there would be a festival with fireworks that night (dejavu from our arrival in Brest).

We wandered around the festival, bought some cake and generally had a look at what was going on.

But the main attraction would be the fireworks, which were being set off from the middle of the marina. In the picture below you can see the pontoons for the fireworks very close to the catwalk of the marina where the photo is taken from.

We decided to watch the fireworks from this calm and quiet marina location, and it’s one of the largest, loudest, and best firework experiences we have ever had.

The fireworks were so close you really couldn’t fit them all in your field of view at once.

Here is a little snippet from near the end of the show.

Journey to Leixões

The next hop on our way to Porto was Leixões.

One of the things that we had been worrying about in Portugal was the police possibly kicking out of anchorages, but we had no such problem in Caminha, so could only hope that the reviews we had seen on Navily were the exception rather than the norm. Leixões had a similar review saying that a boat had been told to move at 3am from the anchorage in the Port.

Our journey was another short hop down the coast. We probably should have left a little earlier as we arrived in Leixões after dark.

We anchored right in the corner of the anchorage, near 2 other boats and had no issues for the night.

You can see the anchorage on Navily here and read my full review.

When entering be aware that large ships may be entering or exiting the port. The anchorage is in the corner of the main area of the port, just the other side of the marina wall in a shallower area 2-4m chart depth. We anchored easily, close to the wall and out of the way of any ship movements and spent the night with 2 other boats (a Tri and another monohull), probably would have been room for another 4-6 boats without getting in the way of things. Good protection, though you will get some wake from pilot boats occasionally. There is some noise in the port, but we had a good sleep. Very muddy bottom when pulling the anchor up, lots of mud came up. No sign of the police, I can imagine if you anchor too far out they might ask you to move, we dropped anchor at 41°11.102N, 8°42.335W with the other 2 boats to our NW

To Porto

We primarily anchored in Leixões so that we could be as close as possible to Porto without actually being in Porto.

The sail the next day was only around 4 nautical miles and we were in Porto before 8am!

But let’s leave everything about Porto for the next post!