28th September

Sunday 28th September 2008, day 71. 38° 41’.66 N, 009° 12’.23 W. Lisbon.

We have been far too busy sight-seeing in Lisbon to write up the blog. We are ashamed of ourselves.
After 10 days of eating and relaxing, life gets back to "normal" tomorrow when we set off for Madeira. This will be our longest passage so far, around 480 nautical miles. For the first time, our port of refuge if we find ourselves obliged to head for land will be in Africa, not Europe. Tomia is fully "vittled", the water tanks are being filled as I type, and the weather forecast is benign. What more can we ask for?

12th September

Friday 12th September 2008, day 55. 40° 08’.84 N, 008° 51’.59 W. Figueira da Foz.

After fog and wind, today’s challenge is waves. The only thing between us and Newfoundland right now is sea, so whatever weather is going on over there (currently the remains of Hurricane Gustav) ends up with us sooner or later, in the form of swell. We seem to have left behind the short chop of Biscay and the Channel, so the waves, however high, come in at well-spaced intervals. Tomia rides them unconcerned, rising and falling as they pass under her, as buoyant as a plastic duck. But they cause us to roll and pitch, which in turn makes sailing awkward. The wind angle changes as the sea comes in from the starboard quarter, we lift up and heel to port, then the wave passes underneath us, we roll back to starboard, the wind disappearing as we go down into the trough of the sea, the sail collapses, before filling again with a crack as the next wave comes through. All rather tiring, and music to a sail-maker’s ears, so we end up turning on the engine to give us some progress through the sea. If there was any decent wind, this would be different, but there’s not really enough to get us going.

We did manage to sail with the engine off for the last hour approaching the landfall, and then had the harbour entrance to contend with. Waves that are benign out at sea, however high, are a different matter approaching land. They have nowhere to go, and, like any other thing which is trapped with limited options, become frustrated, noisy and destructive. All that energy, which has rolled unhindered over the ocean for thousands of miles, is suddenly corralled by the harbour entrance and the rapidly rising sea bed, creating a rush of water to catch the entering boat and race her forward, just as if we were on a surf board.

11th September

Thursday 11th September 2008, day 54. 40° 39’.55 N, 008° 43’.81 W. Saõ Jacinte

Yesterday was windless and foggy, with the forecast showing more of the same, so it was a disagreeable surprise to be woken by wind gusting through the rigging, and rain pelting down. We were both lying half-awake, when suddenly we heard frantic cries from another boat close by. We shot out of our berth: someone was dragging their anchor. A quick look through the saloon windows – it was us, and we were bearing down on the boat behind, too quickly for comfort.

In that situation there is a quick balance to be struck between putting on a few clothes – and even more importantly, shoes - and averting disaster. If necessary, we would have dealt with her stark naked, but there was just enough time to throw on the minimum before shooting out of the companionway into the pouring rain. The engine started first time (whatever other troubles it’s given us, its starting has always been impeccable) and from then on things came back under control. It was a nasty shock, though, and when we came below with the anchor well dug in again, it wasn’t just being soaked through and cold that was making me shiver.

Saõ Jacinte is not much of a place. Its main attraction was that it broke our voyage to Figueira da Foz into two day-sails, and also that there is a pleasant town (Aveiro) further up the river, together with some bird-rich wetlands. But with the wind gusting strongly and the holding suspect, we didn’t want to leave Tomia for long enough to explore, so remained beneath the loom of the gas holding tanks, sunning ourselves a little in the lee of the cockpit cover.

The local shop sold chorizo, flip flops and fishing rods, so we chose the first of those for our supper, casseroled with a tin of tomatoes and some odd white beans (tremoço) that had been for sale next door to the olives, but tasted more like under-cooked lentils. Pudding was better, though, thanks to the pasteleria next door, which provided a palmier topped with an orange, almond-tasting jam, and a little custard tart for Anthony.

10th September

Wednesday 10th September, day 53. 40° 53’.01 N, 008° 46’.73 W. On passage to Aveiro.

This morning we woke early to the mournful bleat of foghorns. Visibility in the harbour was down to a few hundred yards, almost blotting out the Christmas tree-like lights of the motor boat anchored next to us. We decided to wait a few hours, and then take a look outside the breakwater to see if the fog lifted a bit out from land.

Now Tomia is slouching, heavy shouldered, through an undulating featureless sea, bounded by a circle of fog 4 miles across. There is virtually no wind, so we are plodding on under engine.

The past four days have been spent in Leixões, the only place for a yacht to stay close to Porto. The marina has nothing to recommend it apart from as a base to explore the city (and the charming, doe-eyed Portuguese harbour master …) The loo block is smelly, and the door to the single ladies’ loo cannot be shut. Perhaps because of this, it is sadly obvious that some of the marina inhabitants decide not to bother with going ashore, but flush straight into the marina. You don’t want to know. One boat on our pontoon appears to have been abandoned; she has been here so long that clusters of mussels are growing off her hull and mooring ropes. Another abandoned boat is slowly rusting through her paintwork. Although we loved Porto, we are not sorry to leave and head off down the coast.

Porto itself more than makes up for the grubbiness of the marina. Built on the steep, rocky banks of the Douro, its narrow shaded cobbled streets, lined with laundry-strewn balconies, give on to white squares decorated with statues of victorious generals and navigator princes, and breath-taking azulejo-decorated churches.
Beneath the immediately impressive beauty there is a strong flavour of decay: in the steep twisting side streets, only a few yards from the triumphal centre or the cathedral-fortress on its hill-top, the tiles have cracked off the facades, the ironwork is rusting, and stone-work crumbling.

A flavour of lands further south is creeping in, among the smart air-conditioned shopping centres.

The central mercado do Bolhão looks as if it has been transplanted from Dakar. The centre of one city block is occupied by a shanty-town of stalls on two levels, within a crumbling concrete and wrought-iron enclosure. Far more fruit and vegetables seem to be piled up on the 30 or so stalls around the upper level, than would be bought in a week. Down below are the flower sellers, the fish-mongers, and the little butchers where you can buy every part (and I mean every part) of a pig, apart, possibly, from the oink.

On the way to the mercado, the route from the city hall takes us through an almost medieval concentration of iron-mongers. Eight or nine of them are cheek-by-jowl at the intersection of two streets. One specialises in cutting keys, two in door handles and padlocks (rows of drawers 8ft high stretch back into the darkness, each with an example of its contents stuck on the front) , while an outlying specialist carries hundreds of reels of different sized string and rope, jumbo packs of loo paper, and devotional candles. Thirty yards further on, we are back in the 20th century, with brightly-lit clothes and interior design shops.

By the way, on the subject of shoes and shopping, I would like to record that Anthony has bought three pairs of shoes so far on this trip. No comment, just a simple fact.

No visit to Porto would be complete without a trip to a port house, so we walked over the bottom layer of Gustav Eiffel’s double-decker bridge to Vila Nova de Gaia, on the south bank of the Douro, where all the port lodges are. Out of the 20 or so lodges that have tours, we chose Graham’s, for associations with a friend who sadly hasn’t been able to join us on board. The vast halls of barrels were full of a smell of something sweet and musty, perhaps wild mushrooms and walnuts, with a layer of redcurrant jelly on top? Some of the vats had little damp patches in the dirt beneath them, but despite running a hopeful finger around the bottom of a few of them, there was nothing dripping just then …

Two hours later: the fog has gone, the sun is shining, but there is still no wind, so we are still plugging on with the motor. I hate motoring: in my view it transforms sailing into nothing better than damp caravanning. But right now, the absence of sails means that, with a couple of cushions, the foredeck is transformed into the best armchair in the world.

4th September

Thursday 4th September 2008, day 47. 42° 07’.12 N, 008° 50’.45 W. Baiona



We are sitting at anchor in Baiona, waiting, apprehensively, for a gale to come through. The gale warning came out last night, and was confirmed and strengthened this afternoon. The marina staff are out tying up their flags and taking down the banners that welcome visiting yachtsmen, to prevent them being torn down by the upcoming wind. Great dark clouds are massing to the west, above the town. We and a couple of other yachts have moved our position as far as we can towards the shore, to gain as much shelter as possible from the surrounding hills; we have put out extra anchor chain, got the dinghy up on deck and lashed it down, checked there’s nothing that could flog loose – and are about to sit down to medallions of pork in a vermouth and crème fraîche sauce; keeping up our standards, even if the weather can’t keep its side of the bargain.

The last entry came from Combarro. From there, replete with sardines and bougainvillea, we went to Vigo for a couple of days, where, thank heavens, we found engineers who had the ability – and the availability – to give our raw water pump a good looking over, diagnose what had (probably) been the problem, and give us a reasonable degree of comfort that the underlying issue had been solved.

[Technical digression for anybody who’s interested: when the exhaust first stopped putting out water, Anthony did some initial diagnostics, and, having checked that the water wasn’t blocked getting into the boat, and wasn’t going anywhere it shouldn’t after leaving the engine, and wasn’t running out of a crack in the engine block (praise the lord), took the raw water pump off.

We found then that the slot on the back end of the pump drive shaft had had a semi circle gouged out on both faces. And the cam shaft adaptor, which had started life as a ridge approx ¾” long, was now a (beautifully turned!) ¼” circle. This was made of 316 marine grade stainless steel, so there had been some fairly massive forces at work, given that the piece had been replaced during the winter servicing only 200 hours previously.

The engineers in Muros were able to obtain for us a new drive shaft adaptor, and a new shaft in the pump. Anthony put the whole lot back together again, and everything appeared to work well, but our concern was what the underlying problem was, because that amount of damage in so little running time presumably indicated something more fundamental.

The engineers in Vigo disassembled the pump again, and checked bearings, greasing, gaskets and tolerances, and have given us a clean bill of health.]

Anyway, apart from engineers, Vigo provided us with yet another wonderful pasteleria, a splendid fish market, our first opportunity to anchor stern to … and the presence of our friend Richard who had flown out to join us, and all his presents: two sorts of chocolate, spares for the boat, a replacement chart plotter*; all good stuff, but also letters from home, four different newspapers, colour supplements, Time magazine, the Economist, three sailing magazines, three light novels, a book on sea birds and another on identifying cetaceans, and Alan Clarke’s 500 page history of the German campaign in Russia in WWII. We are awash in the magic of little black symbols on white paper, and only our great affection for Richard (and gratitude for the effort in lugging all that stuff) stops us from diving head-first into his bounty for the next twenty four hours.

*[another digression for sailing friends: we’ve had faultless after-sales service from Raymarine and Seamark Nunn: when the chart-plotter started going walkabout in Biscay, they offered immediately to send out a replacement, no questions asked. This has been a great weight off our mind.]

We woke the next morning and found the view had changed: subtly, it was hard to put our finger on it, but surely the buildings hadn’t so completely surrounded the harbour when we came in? Had that block of flats been there? No, the whole clicked into focus, it was a vast cruise ship, which had crept in silently while we slept. That explains the alley of expensive fish restaurants in an otherwise rather tatty dockside area, a few hundred yards from the liners’ quay.

A whiz around the town in the morning victualled the ship for the next couple of days, including more different things to try from the pasteleria and some great red langoustine-type creatures from the fish market. We then went off to the Islas Cies, just in the mouth of Vigo’s ria, where we anchored, and …

… spent the afternoon on a white sandy beach in the sun. Mmmm. The trees leaning gently towards the surf were pines, not palms, but apart from that we could have been on a Pacific atoll.

The first time in two months! Up till now, we’ve sometimes had the beach, and occasionally had the sun, and sometimes had the time – now they’ve all come together. Bliss. We had our first attempt at getting an inflatable dinghy off the shore into oncoming breakers, and got back home a little wetter than we’d left!

The following day we went on to Baiona, which has a pretty old town centre, once again well preserved, but surrounded by modern buildings stretching in every direction. We’ve seen this in almost all the towns from Coruña southwards; the old town is very clearly demarcated, presumably protected by planning rules. I imagine the relative inaccessibility of this area has meant that no one much has wanted to develop it till now, though building is now going on apace, and we have seen several hillsides cleared for enclaves of flats and villas.

Richard proved his sterling worth as a crew member by getting out the Brasso and tackling our brightwork; his standards are rather higher than ours, we are ashamed to say. He also cooked the supper which is going to sustain us through the stormy night ahead.

6th September

Saturday 6th September 2008, day 49. 41° 19’.90 N, 008° 49’.72 W. On passage to Leixões.

The storm came through, all right, but apart from ripping the end off our Spanish courtesy flag, did no damage, though we all three were up several times, woken by a change in the note of the wind, or the grating sound as Tomia was swept to the end of her anchor scope, before bouncing back into the teeth of another gust. Today the storm is tearing up the English Channel, causing floods and rain storms. So to anybody in England who thinks we’ve escaped the terrible summer – we’ve had it just like you, just a couple of days earlier.

Richard has asked that I stop singing his praises as chief tidier, washer-up and polisher, as he is modest, self-effacing sort of a chap. Here is a criticism to balance things out – he has read this blog thoroughly, and as a result, we cannot tell him about our adventures, because he knows everything already!

During the course of yesterday we passed from Spanish to Portuguese waters. In Viana do Castelo, last night’s stop, we found we had become more Spanish than we realised over the past month; setting out for supper at 10.30, a time that would find restaurants a scant 20 miles to the north in full swing, we found ourselves the last guests, with waiters sweeping up around us as we ate pudding. Now I have to shake all the Spanish vocabulary out, and start replacing it agora mesmo with Portuguese.

Friday 29th August, 42° 25’.69 N, 008° 41’.98 W Combarro

Last time I wrote enthusiastically about the joys of staying put in Finisterre. Be careful what you wish for, as it may come true … We stayed put a whole week at our next stop, Muros, and although it was a pretty enough place, our inactivity wasn’t through choice. As we sailed into the bay, after a great sail down from Finisterre, we realised that there was no water coming out of the engine exhaust, which means no cooling water going round the engine: in short, bad news.

The next week could be read as a long saga of frustration: trips to the mechanics, promises that the pump would be looked at tomorrow, tomorrow never coming, finally a great deal of expense and a temporary solution which got us on the move again, but with no resolution of the underlying problem.

Better to treat it, and remember it, as an enforced “holiday”, where we sat in bars and restaurants and cafés to watch the world go by, ate vast quantities of seafood, got the blog up and running, went to Santiago de Compostela. In the end found we barely had enough time for everything we’d meant to do.

The map from the tourist office showed a “lavadoiros” and as some washing had built up to we set out to investigate. A public washing place, yes, but with forty or so stone basins fed by a spring, led along a concrete irrigation channel! It was still very much in use, judging by the lines of clothes around the perimeter. Being over-civilized souls, and believing in the merits of hot water for washing, we set off instead in the rib to the village of Portosin, across the ria, balancing on three bin-liners full of sweaty clothes and bedding.

We are eating so well! Quantities of fruit – how nice to be in a country where almost all the fruit is grown locally. The nearest we have come to a ready meal is a pot of fruit-flavoured yoghourt. Our favourite restaurant in Muros described itself as a Pulperia – an octopussery? Pulpo alla Gallego are pounded to make them tender, simmered and served in red wine, with olive oil and paprika. Delicious! Then there are the deep-fried squid with their crispy purple-red tentacles, the plates of sardines (of a size which means that no tin could take them), the mejillones (mussels), the almejas (clams), and always the possibility of a little tarta de queso (cheesecake) for postres. For elevenses and breakfast, the pastelerias provide sweet pastries, including old-fashioned cream puffs that explode with crumbs of flaky pastry and spurts of cream at the first bite. The fishing catch is sold in an impromptu market every afternoon. On our last evening in Muros we took back a bag of langoustines, simmered them quickly, then fried them in a little garlic butter to crisp them up.

We are muscling up a bit with all the hauling on ropes – in my case just getting rid of the worst of the desk-bound flabbiness, but Anthony is becoming quite rrrrippling with muscle. He has celebrated this by getting out a T shirt he must have bought in the 70s, cream with thin navy blue horizontal stripes, and navy blue buttons on the shoulder seam. With his tan – he is now so black it just looks as if he’s forgotten to wash – he looks like a thorough-going native of Marseilles.

One day we took a bus to Santiago de Compostela. By the roadside there were many little stone buildings, standing on saddle stones, about 12’ by 3’, with ventilated walls, and a small spire, and often a cross, at both ends. There were no obvious ladders or steps leading up to the small doors in the side. We puzzled what they might be. They had the immediate air of being family mausoleums, but almost every house seemed to have one, often right outside the back door, and there was washing hanging under several of them … hen houses? Places for the jamón to dry in safety? Stores for winter clothes? Privies?

Our destination, Santiago, is the city where the apostle St James is supposed to be buried and is a place of pilgrimage for thousands of people by foot, on horseback and bicycle every year. The front of the cathedral has a Gothic face and the high altar is covered in gold coloured carvings and is extremely ornate – rather over-elaborate for our taste and not quite in keeping with the very simple life that Jesus and his apostles lived.

Santiago has a lovely collection of squares with fountains - one with a bust of an etiolated 16th century face, pointed beard and ruff. To English eyes, especially those which have recently been in Plymouth, the obvious description was Frances Drake - most unlikely though on this bit of the Spanish coast. It was Cervantes.

We had a wonderful lotus eating time in Muros, and really slowed down to the local pace of life. It reminds me of the following story - with apologies to anybody who´s heard it before, and to my former colleagues


The management consultant and the fisherman

Not so long ago, a management consultant took a holiday in a small Spanish fishing village.

In between fielding messages of great importance on his blackberry, and working up a couple of business plans for developing the village with a marina and high-end leisure complex, he practised his Spanish on Pedro, a local fisherman. Pedro took his fishing boat out in the morning, and busied himself around the bay, checking his pots for lobsters, trawling his nets for cod and hake, and visiting his vivero to haul up ropes of mussels. He returned around midday to sell his catch, then took what was left home to his family. At around 5 in the evening he would saunter back into the plaza, and pass the rest of the day chatting with passing friends, over a beer if he was in funds, or just sitting by the fountain if the fish had been scarce.

The management consultant found Pedro’s lifestyle deeply disturbing, and he worried for the future of this amiable man, who, although well into his 40s, appeared to have no capital, no savings, nothing to protect him against the vagaries of the world. As the week went on, he abandoned his musings on how to make money out of the village, and devoted his energies to planning a better future for Pedro. He made several phone calls to colleagues, researched EU and regional grants, and sat in the plaza working diligently on his laptop.

The day he was due to return in body to the job which he had barely left in spirit, he went to see Pedro, and gave him the fruits of his efforts.

“My friend” he began. “I would like to make you a free gift. It really upsets me to see you sub-optimising your wealth accretion opportunities in such a way. Although I normally charge my time at €500 an hour, I would like to make you a present of some of my valuable consulting experience, gained with some of the largest corporations on this earth. I believe you and your family deserve a better life, and I wish to be the person who facilitates the ascension of your family through the socio-economic grades.

Pedro listened politely.

“I started with a piece of diagnostic work. I think we can agree that the career you have chosen for yourself can be described, using the EU standard descriptors, as “fishing and ancillary trades”. Pedro nodded. “I have reviewed your pattern of activity, and have noted that you spend on average 3.25 hours every day at your chosen work. Research at our head office in Santa Clara has devised a matrix of basic minima for non-work items, which should ensure the continuing maximisation of productivity. I have applied these to you career, age and personal fitness levels (which are, by the way, quite superior), and the model gives you 6 hours a day for sleep, 0.5 hours for self-maintenance (including meals) and 1.5 hours for personal interactions (which may also include meals). This means that there are a further 12.75 hours during which you can work, every single day!” He clearly regarded this as a conclusion that would delight Pedro.

“So, you are asking yourself, what should you do with this extra time, that, balancing risk with likely outcome, and while preserving the unique aspects of your chosen career, will maximise the life-time earnings potential, and enable the construction of a solidly-backed wealth portfolio to transmit in a tax-efficient fashion along an inter-generational path?” Pedro nodded, thoughtfully. The question, certainly, was not one he had posed himself before that day.

“This is the strategy I have devised for you!” He started to pull print-outs from the folder under his arm, and lay them down on the stone bench on which Pedro was sitting. Flow charts followed, time-lines, balance sheets, colourful presentations embellished with pictures of sacks of gold and stick men dancing with joy. It took him several minutes to explain the full plan: the additional fleet of Panamanian-registered fishing boats, the tuna canning factory financed by the regional government, the refrigerated lorries, the hitherto unexploited market niches and marketing angles. A few of the pages threatened to blow away, and he anchored them with pebbles from the beach as he orchestrated their story, conjuring, conducting, weaving his vision of the vast and profitable commercial empire.

“And now”, he said, “we get to the best bit!” He held up a piece of paper with just one number on it, in a large, golden font. “2033!” “This is the point at which we realise the wealth you have created over the previous twenty five years. We will by that time have several options, but if my predictions for the mid-century evolution of the fast-to-consumer high value-add fish-product market are correct, we should be looking at …” he plunged into a jumble of financial details, and further spreadsheets flew out of his folder for Pedro’s inspection.

The consultant paused. “So, my friend, you will be rich! You will be the richest man, not just in this village, but in the province. Imagine that!” He moved to the killer arguments. “What would you do then? Imagine the sort of life you could lead! Once you’d got the buy-out in the bag you could slow down at work, find someone to take over the running of the business for you, delegate some routine stuff. You could have a little time for yourself, take up a hobby, perhaps go fishing a bit, spend some quality time with your family - why you’d only need to work a few hours every d …” He tailed off, and stood silent.

The sun sparkled on the harbour. A few waves lapped on the slipway. A gull squawked overhead, and the little breeze picked up several of the spreadsheets and scattered them over the gorse bushes around the harbour. Pedro smiled.


Anybody who wants to reply with La Fontaine’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper is most welcome!

When we finally left Muros, we headed into Sanxenxo, a town in the Ria de Pontevedra, whose proximity to the motorway network has built it up into a flourishing holiday resort. The engineers there were most friendly and interested in our problem – in the end, we had father, son and cousin all sitting down looking at the worn out pieces – but without the resources to help us. They did, however, recommend another marina in Vigo, in the next ria. Sanxenxo also provided copious hot showers … Tomia has got a shower, but we always have to be careful with the water, and a shower is a quick burst of water, soaping, and another quick burst to rinse. It is bliss, just every couple of weeks, to stand under a shower that is blasting out water as hot as you want, for as long as you want. The third star in Sanxenxo’s crown is an heladeria selling grapefruit-and-rose flavoured sorbet!

From Sanxenxo we came to Combarro, towards the head of the ria. A ridiculously charming village, whose old part has been fully restored without losing its character. At the minute it is poised safely on this side of the line between quaint and cute, but a new marina is just being built (the diesel pumps are still in their bubble wrap!) so perhaps the souvenir shops are not far behind. A sequence of little stone-built fish restaurants and taperia line the harbour. Great walls of purple bougainvillea cascade down, and there were several trees whose names I don’t know, with foot-long yellow trumpets hanging down, smelling heavily and sweetly in the evening air.


On Friday we took the rib right up the ria, beyond where yachts can navigate, to the provincial capital of Pontevedra. The red port-hand marks on the stone piers that mark the channel appear to be made of terracotta piping – a very practical idea. As usual, every navigational mark has been colonised by gulls and cormorants, who find them an excellent vantage point for spotting fish or drying out wings. The old centre of the town, like Combarro’s, has been preserved intact, with modern buildings in a ring all round, but almost none in the centre itself.

The main product of the town seems to be bars and cafés; at least one in every one of the many pleasant squares. 3€ gets us a beer, a cup of coffee, a large bowl of nuts, access to several papers, and the opportunity to sit for as long as we want admiring the view. The protestant work ethic is bound to kick in again before too long, but I’m enjoying being without it, just for a while.

I am looking forward to the approaching end of August, which means all the sales will stop. I have never seen so many windows full of enticing shoes – and have no excuse to buy a single frivolous pair.

love to all