Part 1: Sunday & Monday 22-24 August
The weather has changed and we are having strong winds from the South delivering a lot of rain and thunder and lightning. The pontoons are undulating with the wave surges and La Bamba is rocking around on her moorings not that unlike Roly-Poly Bay.
The good news is we weren’t going anywhere anyway, as we are awaiting our Ocean Crew – Alex and Will – who arrive in the next couple of days.
Other boats here are also waiting out the storms and I met our first fellow ARC participant in the laundry room: Firesong, from Gosport – a Southerly 42 – also a lovely blue!
We have been on the boat doing some jobs (well that’s mostly David) and also visiting Porto in the rain. One of the features of sailing is that you often visit places in bad weather, as you don’t want to be sailing in it!
I was last in Porto over 40 years ago, and I am just as enchanted.
We visited the bishops palace and the cathedral, both good in the rain. There was a long line going into the cathedral, which is why we headed for the Bishops Palace where there was no queue.
We bought a joint ticket for the palace and the cathedral (only 7 euros) and because we had our cathedral ticket already we could jump the queue completely for the cathedral! We felt very smug!
Drank a bit of port.
And enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere and friendly Portuguese.
We were going to go on a day out up the Douro river but rain stopped play so we are going to visit the Cockburn Port cellars on Tuesday instead.
The rain has been quite torrential at times and we left our front hatch open. This is usually fine with the awning over it but unfortunately the sheer volume of water filling the deck forced a deluge into the boat and onto our newly made bed!
We have spent the last 2 days drying out the mattresses (sailing is a lot like camping). Fortunately, because La Bamba was built in Sweden, we have heating and we could use it to dry them out.
To be continued….