La Coruna – Cascais

La Coruna

After breakfast on deck at 1300 04/09 it was time to take a look around in La Coruna, and we walked off, after a while 1 crewmember had enough and went back to the boat, but the rest continued around the city. We walked along the beach promenade and then uphill along a peculiar wall, past the opera and up to a planetarium. Here there were many things to look at and to play with – an Eldorado for a science/math teacher! After we took a walk through downtown streets that clearly shows that the difference in upper and lower class is big. We went to typical touristic places and finished the day with a ride on the tram.

To find a place to eat dinner around 2000 is as good as impossible, this was time for tea, coffee and beer among the locals, and all restaurants that served food was closed at this time and didn’t open until later.

Friday morning I went to see the world oldest lighthouse still up and running – The Tower of Hercules. This was a nice trip. Strangely enough it doesn’t say in the tourist guide when it was built, so I have to check it up! Around the lighthouse is a big park with different art that says something about all the myths around this place.

That afternoon, after we discovered that one of our multi control (shows depth, wind speed, wind direction and so on) was full of moist and didn’t work, we set sail and went out to find big swells after the last days bad weather, we were heading towards Vigo, and this day we got to try how it is to change sail in rough weather.

Vigo

The ride to Vigo we used both sail and engine and arrived Saturday night at 2100. It was time to take a look at nightlife in Spain again, and we didn’t’ get disappointed!

At noon next day we took a walk around the city, the sun was shining and we went to a high point overlooking the city and the areas around. This time on a Sunday afternoon not many people were out, but that was ok, we took another ride on a sightseeing bus and got to see most of Vigo, many parks and gardens and we made a stop in a big rose garden with hedges cut to labyrinths were we fooled around. That evening we hoisted the captain to the top of the mast to do an inspection, and he mounted a radar reflector. We had a good dinner out on deck, and at 2200 we left Vigo heading for Portugal and the city Porto.

Porto

Going to Porto we decided to do 4 hour watches instead of 3 hours, and this is ok as long as it is nice weather. After a beautiful sunrise we arrived in Porto at noon. We walked over to the metro, but how to get a ticket is not that easy when it is written in Portuguese, so it was a cheap ride into town.

Porto is an interesting and pretty city that is recommended as a place to see. Big and kind of spectacular bridges connected the different areas of the city.

So we found another sightseeing bus and jumped on. But it wasn’t the same as the previous rides, narrow streets and much traffic resulted in much standstill and time consuming. So it got a bit boring. We had dinner at a nice restaurant by the river, the meat they served us was very tasty and tender, and the waiter said he knew Oslo, Bergen and also Voss. Then it was back to the boat and we left at 2240.

Something in means something out in the other end, eventually, and also this evening, I ha d a visit to our toilet, and when I wanted to pump it over board, the pump wasn’t not in that same opinion, I flushed an flushed, more and more water in the toilet, and something had to be done, we were about to set sail and if the boat listed to much a shitty overflow in the bath room was sure to happen, so had to empty the toilet with a small bucket into a bigger one and throw it over board. Some hot water resolved the clogged hose and the toilet was in working order again. A shitty job, but sometimes shit happens!

Another night with 4 hours watches, then a sunny day at sea with no wind. We anchored outside Nazare that afternoon and jumped into the water for about an hour and did some workout on deck. Then we had dinner while we sailed into the sunset. Just after sunset a few dolphins came over and played in at the bow, one of them was a real show off and wanted our attention by swimming with his belly up and jumping in the water, we have this on tape and hope to get it online soon…

This night there were no wind and good view, but with a lot of fishing gear in the water we had to keep an open eye if we didn’t want to get it in our propel. We had good speed to our destination – Cascais – one of the suburbs to Lisbon. We wanted to lie in this marina since this is a nice place with good facilities. Our captain would go home for almost 3 weeks now. So we did some serious cleaning before he left, removed the floor panels and cleaned them and took all our sails out for drying on the pier. After it was time to take a look around in Cascais and Lisbon, but that you can read more about in the next travel letter!