A quick look round Isla de Canela
We were not unhappy to leave Mazagon behind us, especially as we had a good reaching wind with us, and once again our hardest working crewmate - the Raytheon Autopilot - was briefed on his day's mission; he seldom let us down and, even more important, NEVER answered back.
Our landfall, Isla de Canela (Cinnamon Island), 32 miles or so away, was a pleasant day sail away and if we couldn't atually smell the Cinnamon we might get a whiff of Portugal as it was a nudge away from the border.
Early afternoon and we could see the entrance to the River and we soon negotiating the bar at the entrance, the depth around the starboard mark much better than the 2 metres or so suggested by the chart at that state of tide, although we were amazed by the speed of the flood. We turned to port, passing through the narrow entrance to the marina, leaving the three large fishing boats which had entered the river with us, to travel further upriver to the fishing harbour.
The efficient staff in the rather grand office allocated us a berth quickly and we were comfortably settled by 15.00hrs. After a quick tootle round the town we spoilt ourselves with a super dinner at Bella Italia.
Our sleep was rudely interupted at 4.00am by departing fishing boats from the berths immediately outside the marina. We spent a couple of days enjoying the town, it is a fairly recent marina village type development but quite nicely done and a half hour walk round the head of the bay brings one to the old town which is rather more characterful.
The 3rd September, the new month a timely reminder that we needed to get a move on and 8.30 saw us dropping lines and leaving on the start of the ebb, our Portugese Courtesy Flag ready for the hoist!
18.00hrs saw us sailing past the fishing port, the Puero Deportiva a mile or so ahead, in company with a Spanish sailing school vessel. The school boat had a crew of about 8 and we wanted to be in before them, they would take a long time to clear Portugese systems but they looked as they would overhaul us - the skipper anxious to keep his crew on the boil. When they rounded up to drop sail outside the entrance we decided to go for it and sailed into the outer harbour where the calmer conditions allowed us to do a very quick sail drop. We reached the visitors pontoon about 3 boat lengths ahead and enjoyed our victory no end. Small things, as my mother used to say!
No comments:
Post a Comment