There’s No Escaping It
After nearly a week of chilling out and doing very little I figured it was nearly time to move on again, Sao Martinho had other ideas though.
It’s a peculiarity of this unusual place that when the swell and waves come from a particular direction the narrow entrance fills with steep breaking waves making it impossible to leave safely. That’s what happened on Sunday, the weather was still warm and sunny here but somewhere far out in the Atlantic a storm had pushed the water towards us like ripples on a pond.
There’s a small fishing fleet here and they haven’t moved for two days now, we won’t be moving until they do and right now I’ve no idea when that will be. We’re safely anchored and we can stay as long as necessary but the breaking waves at the entrance do send their own ripples into the bay which has made for a couple of disturbed nights when ‘Gleda’ decides to lie sideways across them. We may have been disturbed but there’s a French monohull anchored near us which has been rolling like the proverbial pig, I’m guessing they’ve been rather more disturbed than us. Another example of two hulls being better than one I think.
So we’ve explored a bit more, walking up to the promontory overlooking the bay and entrance.
We took Oscar over to look at 50m high sand dune at Salir do Porto and mooching in the town.
It’s all very pleasant but it’s going to take a while longer for me to fully embrace this schedule free lifestyle, as the photo above shows I’m working on it though 🙂
Get yourself a surfboard, dude!!
Proud you found the “tunnel”, you can’t imagine how many times we came over to SM do Porto to watch winter storms there. We went there to watch and play with the waves, them sometimes rushing through the tunnel and us like little kids running away. Sometimes, when it’s really bad, even big stones being washed along. Very happy you enjoyed SM do Porto!
Thank you for passing my infos to Gail, feels a lot better now and we all have decided to try to find a way to improve things for sailors who make the way to this lovely place.
By the way, our Boatfestival has nothing to do with a Regatta. It’s a cruising-sailors come-together, to swap stories, to eat and drink and laugh together, to enjoy, and a boatjumble on sunday. But thanks a lot for the good wishes!
Hope you have a lovely time in Cascais & Lisboa, and don’t miss Sines and your appointment with Vasco de Gama! I really enjoyed it there!
Take care xxx
Dody
I think you are in what our colonial cousins call “the zone … dude!”
Can’t wait for the next installment..