It has been a really crazy few days.
It started and finished with some high winds. Over 35 knots. In the shallows of the lagoon we had nothing more then little wavelets that got you soaked on the dingy.
We walked through the town into the Nature Reserve here in San Jacinto. It is a mixture of sand dunes, grasses, every green trees and eucalyptus all running to the sea. The immense sand dunes and the pounding waves gave me the feeling I was on the Skeleton Coast of Africa.
We had one calm day and scouted over to visit Aveiro. We tied the dingy up in town, caught a ferry across the canal and bus up into the heart of town. As we were driving into town we saw the salt lagoons and the interesting hills of bright white salt that had been harvested from the sea. Some had ‘for sale’ signs on them.
You don’t have to get off the bus here to get salt as the centre of Aveiro has lots of shops selling the local salt. The bus drops you off in the centre of town which is pretty with the central canal running through it. There are some lovely examples of architecture and of course your fill of churches.
One amazing church we found that was both tiled outside and inside.
We also found a very creepy grave yard with both memorials and crypts.
Aveiro was ok, but it is a modern town with very little of the old character conserved besides a few key buildings. The canals were concrete lined, the bridges modern and a large shopping mall in the centre of it all selling everything from GAP to Body Shop.
Back to the anchorage in San Jacinto and the calm day of weather had brought a lot more boats South. The anchorage was very crowded and we knew there was going to be trouble once the winds got up in the night….and there was.
By dinner two Dutch boats had collided and decided just to tie together until the morning. By the wee hours of the morning boats with small anchors started breaking free. Most headed up to the pontoons in Aveiro except one boat ‘Madam Bouquet’ of Liverpool. She moved in front of us. We spent the remainder of the day with a horn and fenders ready as she broke free several times and headed at us. We could not convince them it would be safer to move up to the pontoons in Aveiro. Finally Jeff on the boat Horizon rowed out to them with his spare anchor and gave them a hand setting it.
The weather has improved and we have decided to head towards Lisbon today. We will get as far South as we can. It mayl be an over night trip and we would like to make the anchorage near Lisbon in day light, so if we get caught short we will stop just north of Lisbon at Cascais.
The tide is high and we need to get going, so I will fill you in, with pictures, later. The tide waits for no man.
