We got up around 9 ish and the girls went off into town to get some provisions. We left the marina around 11 O’clock for the 35 mile sail down to Nazare. Once again there was very little wind and what there was came from behind so it was another 6 or 7 hour motor sail over very flat sea. The sun came out for a while and it was tee shirts and shorts weather again. Here is Sue enjoying the sunshine.
There was quite a lot of interesting wild life. A couple of pods of dophins swam past although didn’t deem Grand Slam interesting enough to play with. There were quite a few storm petrels around and various varieties of shearwaters (although no “Sooty” ones). We also saw a number of great skewers. I’ve seen a lot of these up in Scotlandbut didn’t expect to see them this far south at this time of the year. More interesting however were the pomarine skewers. We saw at least 3 of these on separate occasions with their distinctive tail “spoons” and white collar at quite close range. Rob had shown me these flying high over the River Forth last year but it was exciting to see them here so close up. Again I am not sure what they are doing this far south in early September. I will check with the oracle (that’s Rob).
We got into Nazare around half past five. The pilot book made out that this was a really nice place to visit with helpful staff – all in all a nice marina. We didn’t quite think it lived up to it’s name (and that is a bit of an understatement!). It was a very small marina with small fingers and not a lot of room between them. Most were full and there was no one around from the marina to direct us to a berth. In the end we parked right down the end of a trot in what was probably the best berth in the marina (and about the only one left we could get into) with no idea if this was someone’s berth. Immigration and police came to the boat to fill in their forms and Pam and Sue went up to the office to get the keys to the pontoons – lucky they did because the office closed at ten to six!
A French boat came in soon after us. With the office closed, there were no keys for them. The police and security shrugged their shoulders as they had nothing to do with the marina office. The French were leaving first thing the following morning so couldn’t even pay! During the evening we saw a weather forecast on the internet and decided we too would need to leave at dawn to make it down to Cascais as strong south westerlies were forecast. That then gave us the problem of returning the keys and paying.
This wasn’t very good organization. At this time of year there are groups of boats heading south, leaving each port and day sailing down to the next one of which the options are limited. Typically 6 to 8 boats will arrive early evening. Closing the office before six is not helpful. We noticed that they had a blacklist of boats that had not paid on the window of the office. I wonder if some of them had the same problem as the French boat. We left our keys and some money in an envelope and pushed it through a window! I rang them the next day to make sure they found it. They hadn’t! Ten minutes later they phoned back to say that everything was ok.
The marina itself was not a lot to shout about. It looked more like an industrial site. It was a good mile walk to the town with the first half of the walk through the port area and down the edge of road (not the most scenic of routes). We actually got the bus to town but had to walk back as the last bus had gone! The town itself was nice and it would have been good to spend a full day looking around (as it was we only had a couple of hours in the dark).The following picture was taken from the boat as we came into the bay and shows the town and some interesting geology. It would have been nice to have taken the train up to the top of the cliffs.
For the next day we were planning to sail to Peniche and then a final sail down to Cascais for Sunday to let Sue catch her plane. As the forecast was talking about southerly winds for a few days, we decided to give Peniche a miss and do Cascais in a “one-er”. Also, the description of Peniche in the pilot book was not very complimentary although given our different view of Nazare, we did wonder if Peniche might actually be quite nice. So it was another dawn start and a 6.15am alarm. Overall I would give Nazare a 2 out of 10. Not impressed!
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