Sun 6th Sept - Viana Do Castelo to Leixios
This particular sail deserved a blog entry all on its own even though it was only 32 miles! We probably had the best sail of the entire trip! The unending swell you get here had reduced to only half a metre which was almost amazing, we certainly weren’t expecting that. The wind was behind us and we zipped out the harbour at about 7 knots, so far so good. As we turned to go South dow
n the coast the wind was behind us and we slowed up a lot meaning it was either engine on or spinnaker up. We got the old spinnaker up after a first botched attempt and sailed beautifully at between 4.5 to 6 knots the whole way to Leixios. It was the first time Ali and I had attempted to put the spinnaker up when it was only the two of us on board and I was surprised how well it went.
Other notable parts of this trip was the absence of the Pelamis sea snake. All of our almanacs gave the coordinates to steer clear of and we thought great today it is so calm we will be able to see it really well. All we ever saw was the four cardinal markers where it used to be before it broke up….. Never mind!
The coast of Northern Portugal is basically one long beach as far as we could tell great for surfing etc but not so great for swimming as I think it is pretty chilly by Algarve standards!
We got into Leixios at tea time only narrowly avoiding running over a small yacht who insisted on tacking right in front of us the whole way up the harbour in fairly windy conditions meaning we didn’t have much manoeuvring options either but thankfully a burst of the engine got us past him and into the marina where a friendly marina attendant was waiting to show us to our berth. We went for a pint in the yacht club to celebrate a good days sailing.
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