Leixoes to Peniche & Lisbon 14th to 24th Sept

Mon 14th Sept Leaving Leixioes -Twice!

I had expressed a wish to leave before the sun came up so we could sail and enter the next port in daylight. This turned out to be a very bad idea indeed.
We set our alarm for 5.30 am and got up and ready. It looked a little misty in the marina but we decided to go for it anyway. As we left the harbour we realised it was far, far foggier than we had thought. We progressed very slowly out of the harbour and it was going not too badly until we were in the outer harbour and we couldn’t identify these really high up lights above us until we realised that they were the lights of a huge ship coming in. Thankfully we were half of our boats length out of its path. We both swore ,realising how close to being run over we were, and promptly turned around and progressed extremely slowly back to port and getting a shock when another big boat came flying out. It was very scary and I was told in no uncertain terms that we leave port only when the ‘skipper’ says so in future. We sneaked back to our berth and went to bed for a couple of hours.

We thought we had got out and back again without anyone noticing , but Olous had seen us and a Norwegian boat too -they all asked why we hadn’t used our AIS - Automatic Identification System so that we would know when there are big boats moving around, well we don’t have it. I think we will just not leave or enter harbours in the fog EVER AGAIN, well until the next time.

We eventually left in still misty conditions in the late afternoon but we could see at least a mile or two so it was a vast improvement! We travelled through the night to get down to Peniche. It was a good night, not too much swell, we had to motor sail the whole way but it wasn’t too bad. There were loads of fishing boats to dodge all through the night. This was all OK until the fog closed in again and I was left looking at little blips on the radar. There were also lots and lots of creel buoys but we were lucky and seemed to have missed them all. It became apparent that night how different Ali and our styles of night watch are. I tend to be on deck all the time looking around for potential collision situations only going below to check the chart or maybe make a quick cup of tea. Ali tends to spend most of his time below occasionally sticking his head up for a look casually about every twenty minutes or so.

We had dolphin company a lot of the night sometimes it was so dark you could just tell by the noise and the green luminescent trails they left.

It was a nice sunny morning and the wind picked up enough for Ali to try out his new jib booming out pole that he had made in Viana. It worked very nicely. The swell and wind were picking up more and more and it was a relief to come around the harbour wall.

Tuesday 15th Sept to Sunday 20th Sept Peniche

In Peniche there is just one long visitor pontoon on the outside of marina and all the boats have to raft up. We managed to come in at the right time for a space at the pontoon which meant we would be the buffer for any boats that came in after us. The first surprise was the local GNR officer was down taking our details even before we had tied the boat up which over the next few days we observed as standard practise. They must have been bored as they live on a small launch on the pontoon with not much else to do. Peniche harbour is warned about in the guide books as being rather perilous because of the wash from the fishing boats. Usually you take some of the warnings with a pinch of salt but in this case it was very accurate. The boats come in every few minutes, varying in size but not speed. There is a 3knot speed limit emblazoned in big red letters on the harbour wall but it seems like the fishermen play a game of ‘How much can you roll the yachties.’ They come racing past as close as not to be obvious at top speed then slow down as soon as they have passed the pontoon sometimes even slowing down on the way out which rather proves the ‘game’ theory. Add that to the really unfriendly unhelpful lady in the tourist office you would begin to think they don’t like visitors around here. Thankfully the marina guy was lovely and the town it self was nice enough. We did seem to have come just a few days too late as a lot of the things we could have done that the kids would like had just been shut down a few days previous.

We spent the first day looking around the town going for a ‘meid leite’ (milky coffe) or two to keep us awake as although the girls had had a good sleep we were a bit sleepy. The wind got up quite a bit in the afternoon and we saw a yacht circling looking for somewhere to tie up so we shouted them over to us. It turned out to be David and Laura a Spanish couple we had met in Viana so it was nice to see how they were getting along. They have just bought their first boat and are learning how to sail as the go along. I think you could choose slightly calmer seas to do that but they seem very happy and up for the challenge.



The main excitement for the girls the first day was trying to guess when their Canadian friends would arrive as we knew they had left in the morning after us. To say they were disappointed when we went to bed with no Canadians in sight would be an understatement. We woke up with the girls jumping around at seven in the morning- there’s a grey boat anchored out there and lots of screaming and dancing. When a few of the boats left and a space appeared at the pontoon, we called Olous and Vicky up ,and they came to the pontoon and the screaming kids were reunited once again! You would think they hadn’t seen each other for a year or two.

The next few days were spent in a now familiar routine, Vicky the kids and I would go for walks around town and have lunch whilst Ali and Olous would get the bikes out and go looking at hardware shops etc. Or all the kids would congregate on one boat and watch a movie or play. We went out pizza one night and Vicky got a huge pizza - pictured! One night Vicky and Olous baby sat our kids whilst we went for a meal which was very good of them and a lovely experience being able to actually chew food without fear of having to leave when the kids get too high. Nyah came over for a sleep over one night which all the girls were really excited about. It was Nyah’s first ever sleep over, and the first one we had on the boat. It all went great, popcorn, Barbie movies, chocolate milk etc. Needless to say Ali skinned out whilst all this was going on! Ali had gone over to the boat of a Scottish lady and her husband to reminisce as it had turned out that she went to school with Ali’s best friend at college and we had met her brother at his birthday party a few years ago. Small world or what! They had a nice night of wine and beer and talking about all the mutual people they knew. Alistair and Olous took all the girls up to the car park a couple of times to teach them all how to cycle and Alisha and Kaylee can now cycle without their stabilisers! Which is amazing as only a week ago Alisha wouldn’t even get on the bike and told us to throw it away after a fall!

All too soon for the girls Saturday came around and we had decided we would sail to Lisbon on the Sunday. We invited the crew of Atmosphere over for a last supper for our last night together. Vicky made a lovely salad and I made nice and easy spagghetti and meatballs we also bought a big chocolate cake from the supermarket and some squirty cream for pudding. We were all feeling fairly full after that even the kids had no more room for snacks. We had some wine but not too much as for me anyway -sailing and hangovers do not mix too well and there was the forecast for wind the next day……

Sun 20th Peniche to Lisbon

We awoke to find that all the other yachts were already leaving and thought we better get a move on as it was a fifty mile sail to Lisbon. We left around 9.30 being waved off by our friends on the pontoon. I thought there would be tears onboard our boat! The Canadians are heading off to Madeira in a couple of days and we wished them well on their journey and headed out to sea. Vicky left us with one important bit of sailing advice which I promised to follow.

Never take on another member of female crew if you need strangers to do a certain part of the trip, and if you do never ever let them sail topless! I will let you all wonder about why!

We got the sails up quickly and then decided to get the spinnaker up. It was all going great for half an hour or so we were sailing smoothly along I had the camera out to show how great it all was……….

until.........






this happened!!!!

AAAAGH!!

It took us about an hour of trying everything we could think of to free the sail. Most of the time Ali was steering the boat around in circles whilst I was hanging off the bow trying to free the sails but we realised that the top of the spinnaker was so tightly wrapped ar

ound the forestay that the only thing we could do was to pout the engine on and crank up the revs to try and out run the sail ,as even though it was twisted around the two balloons had still been propelling us at 5 knots all this time! Thankfully this worked. We sailed along for a while in light winds ,then the wind got up again so we decided to be brave and put the spinnaker back up again. This time paying a lot more attention to what was going on! The wind got up more and more and we were really flying along at some points we were doing over ten knots. It was at those points however I started feeling that the whole thing was slightly out of control and insisted that the spinnaker came down. We still managed 8 knots with only the main sail and we had passed all the other boats that had left Peniche an hour before us so Ali was happy enough.








The approach to Lisbon was ’interesting’ the wind got stronger to the point we were sailing completely reefed and still doing seven knots. There were three big cruise liners on their way out of the channel, countless yachts fishing buoys and boats to contend with and we were going against the flow of the river. We saw one really strange boat that just glided up the river it must be owned by some really rich person. Ali saw it a few days later and it has one of those hatches to drive the launch in and out of. The river is lined with monuments the Torre de Belem is one which is the tower all the famous navigators saw as they came into Lisbon harbour with news of their discoveries hundreds of years ago.






We got up the river and tied up, the wind was still blowing and so there were a few nervous moments but we made it without smashing any other boats - always a bonus. When we settled in for the night we realised that we could hear all the cars and trains going across the bridge and also that we were directly under the flight path into Lisbon airport, even later it became apparent that we were berthed next to a huge night club which played music until oooh about 6 am! Ali thought it sounded atrocious but I thought it sounded like a goods night out.

In the morning we went to check in and met some of the other people we had been sailing along with the day before and Ali said, “that was a good race.” One of the Norwegians replied yes it was- what boat were you, Ali of course replied with the boat with the big green spinnaker that passed you all! He does like to rub it in.

The main reason we went to Lisbon was to get a new sail batten as one of ours had broken and Ali would try to get a piece of stainless steel welded for the bowsprit to take the new gennaker he has ordered. Don’t ask me -I stay well out of it all. We were amazed when Ali phoned the first sail maker and he had the sail batten delivered an hour later for 10 Euros. Very good service indeed. This led him to meet Carlos a self described ‘Mr Fix It.’ He will take you anywhere you want to go and find out how to fix whatever you want - at a price of 17 Euros per hour. He said he could take Ali to a metal worker after dinner so off they went and Ali said it became quickly apparent that Carlos would get every penny squeezed out of the transaction that he could on top of the 17 Euros. He took Ali to one place where it was obvious that the metal workers had no idea, so Ali said he may as well go back to the marina. They went to another guy who actually could do the work but Ali thought Carlos was trying to get in on the cut and when he tried to tell Ali that he would have to buy the full 6m length of stainless steel to get it done I think a few choice words were directed at him. Anyway Ali decided to get the piece made but to cut Carlos out of the equation. The next morning he cycled off 5 miles through the Lisbon rush hour traffic to find Manuel’s workshop himself. Manuel turned out to be a really nice guy who made the piece for the next day for a very reasonable price including delivery.

Lisbon was steaming hot and the first day all we could do was venture out to find and internet café which turned out to be a real hike and we decided to do without until the next port. We went out for dinner as we hadn’t found the supermarket yet. We ate in a really nice place we stumbled across and had a meal that included vegetables for the first time in ages! Usually the food comes with rice and chips but no veg which is OK once in a while but not all the time. We were quite startled to see a sausage dish that was set on fire at other peoples tables and actually burned for quite a while and the flames went about 2 -3 feet high. We got back to the boat all tired and thankfully the night club wasn’t open on a Monday night.

The next day after Ali’s cycle we all got the tram and then a bus to the Lisbon Oceanarium . The public transport was all free as it was ’Pollution’ day in Lisbon. The aquarium is the second largest in the world. It was great. We spent a good few hours in there as it is so big and it was far cooler than being outside! There is a huge central aquarium on two floors with smaller aquariums all around the outside which depict different habitats like the tropics or the arctic. Kaylee had really wanted to see a ray as we hadn’t spotted one in the wild so far! All the info was in English too, which was a relief that I could answer some of the girls questions. There are displays about ecology and fishing and even a display showing you how they quarantine the fish, animals and plants before they are let into the pool. There was an Atlantic section with to sea otters and we took some photos of them although I did feel sorry for them as they didn’t have the same spark about them that the wild ones you see in Shetland do. However we thought our pictures were OK until our tenant Adrian emailed us ones he had taken of wild ones up at Lunna.





We had a walk around near the Aquarium it is in the nice clean new area of Lisbon that is a complete contrast to all the old narrow winding streets of the old town centre. Then we decided to get back to the boat and actually find the supermarket. A Dutch lady happened to be having her groceries delivered to her and Ali managed to bum a lift back in the little three wheeler delivery van back to the shop. He said it was an exhilarating drive, I can well believe that after seeing how some people drive around here!

There is a huge flat smooth bit of tarmac next to the marina so the kids got cycle lessons every night once it was cool enough.

The next day we decided to take the trams up around the old city. On the way we stopped for a drink of water and Ali ordered three banana splits. When we got the bill it looked like the bad handwriting said 6.28 Euros, not bad we thought until Ali gave the waiter the money and he said no it was 28 Euros as the banana splits were 8 + Euros each. I couldn’t help laughing at the “Holy Shit” that came out of Ali. He told the girls to savour every last drop as their ice cream allowance was busted for a month! A lesson learned! The tram ride was good once we found one that wasn’t packed. A bit exciting when the tram driver hit a car that went in front of her. She didn’t care she just got back inside when he had moved and carried on. We got back to the boat and got ready to sail the next day to Sines.