Portugal

25 September 2023 – Peniche, Portugal

We are now in Portugal! The Portuguese coast doesn’t have many protected places to stay, so we’ve mainly been going from marina to marina, but the towns have pretty tiled houses and great bakeries, so I don’t really mind. We first went to Porto, though we stayed downriver of the city and docked in a small village called Afurada instead.

Downtown Porto was about a forty-five minute walk away. We stayed in the marina for two nights, but there were too many waves and the gate was broken and kept locking us out so we moved to anchor in the river, which seemed like a good idea at the time.

Afurada is really nice; it is basically three streets in one direction and three streets in another but is packed with restaurants, cafés, and houses covered in intricate and colourful tiles. There is also a fruit market where we bought so much delicious produce, including passion fruit for thirty cents each.

Our friend Emily flew in to visit us and is staying with us for a few days, which has been lovely. She met us in Porto and we walked to the city together. Porto is really cool, with lots of old buildings and a great view of red-roofed houses and old stone churches from on top of the hill. We took a boardwalk along the side of the river into the city, then took a bridge over the river to get to downtown. It was interesting being there but we were glad Festina Lente was a bit out of the city, otherwise everything would have been too chaotic. Back in Afurada, we had a delicious dinner at a seafood restaurant.

The next day, we planned to leave early to sail sixty-five nautical miles to Figuera da Foz, but when we went to pull up the anchor, the chain was stuck. My dad pulled back on it with the engine but it still wouldn’t move, and there was only so much space to maneuver and a lot of current ripping through the river. He ended up taking the boat in circles around the anchor and causing a lot of ominous clanking from the bottom of the river, leading us to think that the chain was caught on something metal like rebar. Eventually, the anchor pulled free and we were able to bring it up without any damage being done.

We sailed all day to Figuera da Foz, and although the wind was light in the morning, in the afternoon we put the spinnaker up. Dolphins came to play in our bow wave.

We got into port just before dark and had a quick evening walk past a giant bullfighting arena.

The next day held a fifty nautical mile sail to the town of Peniche, during which Jonas caught two mahi mahi and we saw lots more dolphins.

In the late afternoon, we made a pitstop at an island just off the coast called Berlenga. It is a beautiful park with only a few buildings on it and rugged, pink rock terrain with a few scraggly bushes. The anchorage was pretty sketchy (i.e. it was exposed to half the Atlantic) so the plan was to stay just long enough to walk around; unfortunately, it was a pest-free island so Sirius wasn’t allowed on it and my dad had to stay behind. We arrived during golden hour, which made the island even more beautiful. We got out of the dinghy by an old fort and walked across a narrow archway to a set of stairs that took us to the top of the island, then walked across it and took in the great view.

It was evening as we got back to Festina Lente and sailed the few miles to Peniche, so we had a great view of the sunset over the ocean. Once we had anchored, my parents walked Sirius while Emily and I fried the mahi mahi and Padrón peppers for dinner.

Today, we are doing another long sail to Lisbon, where we will drop Emily off. The anchor got stuck (again!) as we were pulling it up but it was much easier to get free than it had been in Porto. We will probably arrive in Lisbon in the evening and stay there for a day or two.

Heading South

Seeing Blue Hour in Baiona

Festina Lente