Friday - 27 July 2018

As we came out of the marina, after slipping lines at a relaxed 08.15, the entrance to the bay was full of little fishing boats, with one man in each. Most had the rakes on long poles to rake the bottom for muscles. We speculated that, maybe, they were out there before going to work, or, perhaps, they were out there early while it’s cool. It made a lovely scene. The mussels growing on the pontoons in the marina were enormous, the biggest I ever seen. The shell fish seems super sized here. We had seen some giant lobsters in a restaurant tank in the town last night.

The forecast was little wind in the morning, but, as we got out to sea, from the Ria, there was a nice sailing breeze. We couldn’t sail the exact course we needed so tacked down the coast, making only slow progress towards our destination. However, we were treated to another fabulous dolphin show for about an hour.

At lunchtime, we crossed the border into Portugal so changed the courtesy flag. The time changed to Portuguese summer time, the same as BST, which seems much better, when we are 008 degrees west.

We reminded ourselves of the Portugal contribution to exploration and great sailors, through people like Henry the Navigator,  Magellan and Vasco da Gama. The treaty of Windsor 1386 established a pact between Portugal and England, which is widely considered to be the oldest surviving alliance in the world.

We had a spell of superb wind for a couple of hours, when we cracked along at 7 - 8 knots in the right direction, then the wind died, so we had to resort to putting the engine on.

We arrived in Leixoes, the commercial port for Porto, at around 7:30pm. We couldn’t get a response from the busy marina by phone or VHF so anchored in the harbour, along with five or six other boats. It is an industrial port, so not pretty. Our evening entertainment, though, was a couple of tugs turning round a sizeable ship, right next to us, one tug pushing, the other pulling. It was very slick. After supper, we watched the daily highlights of The Tour de France, then collapsed into bed exhausted.

Distance covered today	75.1	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	902.7	nautical miles
Distance covered 2018	1623	nautical miles

Tricia (and Steve, and Chris)