To be honest I think we were both a little disappointed with Porto. As Portugal’s second largest city and a popular weekend break destination we had expected a cool and trendy city full of cool and trendy shops and people. It isn’t really. Our judgement may have been off a little due to a number of factors: firstly the marina is a couple of miles out of the city and other than walking there seemed to be no alternative, secondly, due to bad weather, we stayed in the Porto marina longer than we would have wished. It is true that Porto does have some fascinating historic churches and monuments all spread out over many steep hills. A lot of tourists and too many restaurants to mention but cool and trendy shops there were few. Porto is going through a bit of a building boom as the city attracts more of the aforementioned city breaks and it’s possible that it’s still coming to terms with what it should be providing (if we are at all representative of anything). The Portuguese people are lovely and mostly speak fluent English and due to the strong historic links (founded on port) seem to have a soft spot for the English.

Next to the marina is an old fishing village where most of the enterprising residents have opened small restaurants cooking fish (especially sardines) over charcoal. They were superb.

We decided to take a trip (by train) into the centre of the port region. We went to Pinhau (about 2 ¼ hours by a train which snakes up the Douro river) and spent a very enjoyable day walking the vineyards and touring the Symington Port Estate (Symington are huge; owning Dow, Cockburns and Warres port and claiming to produce 20% of the worlds port). The vineyards are extremely steep and very rocky. This produces low yields of grapes rich in flavour and the 20+ varieties of Portuguese grapes – specially adapted to this altitude and dry climate – have fermentation stopped by addition of alcohol and blended into the various ports. Most of the manual processes, such as treading grapes, have been replaced by machinery and sadly they no longer ship the port from the vineyards using sailing dhows (as I learnt in school). They did have some footage of this though and it was quite incredible shooting rapids in a 60’ sailing boat laden with port barrels.

Eventually the strong Southerly winds stopped and (although there was a residual swell) we set sail on a 62 mile journey to Figueira da Foz. The weather the following day was expected to be fine but after that a number of days of heavy (F5 gusting 6) Northerly winds were forecast. We decided to push on South, skipping out Nazare and heading for Peniche where we are now sitting, waiting for the winds to abate before we can continue to Cascais where we hope to meet some friends. As we passed Nazare we sailed over an enormous under sea trench (about 2 miles wide, 10 miles long and over a mile deep). We have a lot of bathyscopic data on our instruments and could clearly see the trench as we passed over it. This trench does strange things to the swell. Allegedly it is supposed to smooth out the sea (although to be honest we didn’t notice this), under certain conditions it can produce enormous waves (the largest surfed wave of 100’ was produced by this trench) which we were fortunate enough not to see.

A special mention should be made of lobster pots which litter this coast in water between 50’-200’. They are difficult to see, especially in fog and impossible to see at night. Generally they come in pairs (one marking each end of a string of lobster pots) and for any non-sailors reading this blog they are a major hazard because if one wraps around the propeller there is a good chance that the engine will stop and the boat will be tethered to the seabed. So a wary eye needs to be kept at all times – not the relaxing downwind sail we were expecting