It's the shortest distance travelled to date... 18 miles, 4 miles out of Cascais and straight up the River Tagus until we couldn't go any further (short from taking the mast down). Not surprisingly, we're motoring again as we didn't have enough wind to sail however the visibility was excellent.

The current runs quite strong in the river so we tried to time our arrival for HW at 'Marina Parque das Nacoes', located on the former Expo 98 site. Surprisingly, upon entering the river we found the tide was already on the ebb - very strange indeed.

It was like our own private river trip as we headed up river passing several monuments and places of interest along the way, all we were missing was the 'talk' from an official tour guide as the resident tour guide was far too busy taking photos of the 'Torre de Belem' and 'Monument to the Discoveries'...


Torre de Belem


Monument to the Discoveries

We were deafened by what we can only describe as 'swarming Bees' as we approached 'Ponte 25 de Abril'. As soon as we passed underneath, we noticed that the road was constructed of metal grids!



Once underneath the bridge, we couldn't miss the sculpture of Christ standing on the hillside on the opposite side of the river.



We continued on against the current passing the centre of Lisbon and the dockyards until another bridge came into view. Now with approx. 2.5 knots of current against us and with the marina approaching, Bruce decided that it would be sensible to call ahead on the VHF and notify the marina of our arrival as we didn't fancy arriving on the reception pontoon with the potential of be 'pinned' onto it by the current.

A dory came to meet us in the river and directed us into the narrow channel just before we had to turn into the marina entrance itself. Some swift manoeuvring was necessary by Captain Bruce as we negotiated the cross-current as we rounded the breakwater which immediately followed with a hard-turn to right in order to get through the sluice gates to the calm waters of the marina. As usual our ropes were taken by two marineros upon our arrival at our berth.

This marina doesn't cater for mega-yachts because the sluice gates are far too narrow but instead it caters for ducks (it's lovely to see ducks in Portugal as we really didn't see many in France apart from in the supermarkets)! The ducks here have their own landing pontoon, slipway, floating platform in the shade, caged house, water and food supply.



Having arrived at the marina Bruce was keen to understand where he had gone wrong with his tidal calculations... it would appear that the tidal information differs by as much as three hours depending on the source of the data - almanac, meteo consult and chart plotter. The question is which one is right so we know when to leave... but with so much to see and do in Lisbon and the surrounding regions we're definitely staying put for a while so we can sort the tides out later :-)

Total distance this season: 968.32 nautical miles