Swallow's adventures

On 27/4/17 we weighed the anchor at 0900 and the tide took Swallow out of Culatra, heading for Ayamonte; the fishermen lined the breakwater in anticipation of catching the fish which were coming out with the ebb. We had an uneventful trip of 33 miles and raised the Spanish courtesy flag next to the Portuguese one ready to cross the international maritime border; and of course we jumped forward an hour! We were welcomed by Locomotion ( Sue & Ed) who were kind enough to cook dinner for us. The following evening Ula (Andy & Clare) cooked us a curry; we could get used to this! The chandlery in Ayamonte is well stocked; we managed to find a replacement Japsco cartridge for under the galley sink - we discovered in Portimao that our current cartridge had a crack in it and was leaking. This was not our only water problem: the cold water pipe to the head's sink burst and Paul had to by-pass the cold feed for a few days while we waited for a spare part to be delivered to the chandlery.

Three days later we, accompanied by Kady (Ray & Cath), headed up the Guadiana River, locally named the Guadiana Glue; apparently many cruisers have ventured up there and never come back as they have fallen in love with the place. We departed at low tide as we had to sail under a low suspension bridge; we were a little nervous about this as the clearance at HAT (Highest Astronomical Tide) is a mere 20m! We had heard a horror story of a catamaran whose mast hit the bridge and fell down and punctured the skippers' lung! Hence, Ula decided to give it a miss as their mast is somewhat higher than ours. In reality the experience was not as bad as we had envisaged and all was well (incidentally the locals call this the 'laxative bridge'). We managed to sail most of the way up the winding river, right on the border of Portugal and Spain, with just the genoa on a gentle beam reach, the flooding tide helped us.; it was a bit confusing trying to decide which time zone we were in! There are luscious green low-lying hills on both sides of the river and numerous wind turbines on the Spanish side. As we passed Foz de Odeleite, Portugal, we heard a cockerel crowing in Spain. The river banks were lined with bamboo which breaks away in the storms and drifts up and down the river in rafts with the tide. As we ventured further up-river we saw olive groves and orange trees and lots of rare birdlife, such as golden orioles and azure magpies; Paul also spotted a couple of buzzards.

There are a few tiny villages on the banks and also the odd shack where boat owners have bought a small plot of land as they have fallen in love with the river! All very primitive. After 4 hours we reached Alcoutim, on the Portuguese side, and Sanlucar , on the Spanish side. We anchored between the two and shortly afterwards a very pleasant British 'local', Ted, came out to us in his dinghy to let us know that the holding wasn't very good where we were; we took Ted's advice and tied up to Alcoutim's pontoon for a couple of nights.; we also fell in love with this place, so peaceful and friendly; the view across the river at night to Sanlucar is stunning. There was lots of partying going on for Labour day (1st May) with live music and lots of dancing and sardine eating! We anchored again the following day and Paul was delighted to catch a sea bass for dinner! However, he was not so delighted to break Swallow's compass mount! We ventured in to Sanlucar on the dinghy where the locals were friendly but there was not a lot going on; the ex-pats, who had been on the pontoon for years, were not quite so friendly, being very territorial about where we could tie our dinghy up. After that we had a very relaxing afternoon bobbing around, listening to 'The Best of Sade' and watching all the birdlife; we could also hear the goats' bells from both sides of the river. Lying in bed we heard the church bells from both villages, the Spanish side obviously had one extra dong and was also rather out of tune! The wind got up later and we yawed around a lot and swung a bit too close to the bank so we decided the next morning to venture back down the river; after a bit of a struggle to get the anchor up we motored 4 miles and tied up to the pontoon at Guerreiros do Rio for 7 euros a night, bargain! Another friendly, small village with a very interesting river museum with beautifully crafted scale models of the traditional boats of the lower Guadiana, which have been used for fishing and cargo over the last 200 years. The local bar owner chatted to us whilst he fished off the pontoon and we watched the fishermen bring in and wash their catch. On 05/05/17 we reluctantly motored back to Ayamonte - if we'd had 'all the time in the world' we definitely would have stayed longer and explored this wonderful place further; definitely up in our top ten so far!

We spent a few more days in Ayamonte and Paul fixed the leak in the heads and ready for us to move on to Rota. Every evening enjoyed watching and listening to the flocks of honking, pink flamingos fly over; we were not, however, impressed by the zoo in the park as there were several animals caged up going stir crazy with limited room, i.e a lion, tigers, baboons, ostriches, deer and a very morose looking bear.