June 27th – 7th July (Portugal)
During our second stay at Cascais we came across the Museu Condes de Castro, which we wandered through and found very interesting. It’s a very touristy town but we enjoyed our stay there. From there we had an excellent sail down to Sesimbra and anchored in the bay. It’s a pretty little town, full of Portuguese tourists. The next stop was Sines marina, where we stayed for four nights, waiting for the wind to subside a bit.
Whilst there, Mike decided that we should visit the Port Office to pay our light dues (maintenance of navigation lights and buoys), which costs the princely sum of €2.00. However the fine for not paying is €235.00. It seems to be only around Lagos that that this fee is collected and the Portuguese do carry out checks, so it seemed prudent to pay. After a walk to the far end of the bay, we finally found the office and explained what we wanted. The lady we spoke to didn’t know what to do, so it took two members of staff at least thirty minutes to try to enter all the details on the computer and then print our official document, which was franked and signed, along with an official stamped receipt. Everyone involved thought it was pretty silly to waste one man hour for €2.00. Not really a great contribution to the upkeep of buoys and navigation lights in Portuguese waters!
After a very early morning start, we left Sines and motored about 50 miles down to Cape St Vincent, where we turned left to sail along the Algarve coast. Finally we were in flat water for the first time since leaving the Rias, as the prevailing wind was now coming off the land instead of behind us. Such a welcome change from the continuous swell all the way down from Baiona. The wind picked up and we had a great sail to an overnight anchorage and the next morning continued along to Lagos where we anchored in the bay.
That evening we recognised an Israeli boat heading into the marina. Whilst in Lisbon we’d been shown around Aliza (a 56 foot steel boat), by her owner Efraim Schwartz. She’d been built in Israel in the 1980s by Efraim and his father and they then sailed her around the world. She ended up in the USA where he lived and worked for many years before retiring from HP a couple of years ago. He and two friends, Steve and Dave, had just sailed across the Atlantic en-route to Israel for the winter. The following morning we motored into the marina in the dinghy and were warmly welcomed aboard Aliza. The crew had increased by one as Steve’s wife, Karen had recently arrived. Some time later we all headed off into town for a very late lunch and caught up with all their news since we’d last seen them. Later that evening they left the marina and anchored close to us in the bay. The next morning we used the two dinghies to do a tour of the spectacular caves and rock formations along the coast, but we had to cut the trip short as the wind got up a quite a bit and we’ve only got a small dinghy and outboard. By the afternoon the wind was up to 24kts.
