Well it has been a day of highs and lows.  We all get those days sometimes.

First, a bad thing, I had to say goodbye to another girl friend.  This one was a fellow boat dog as well.  She is Portugese by birth but owned by a Dutch man.  Does that mean I get to tick off two countries with one bitch?

Any way I have been a little depressed all day as a result

We got out of the Marina ‘OK’.  Our lovely neighbour told us the secret was to let the front lines go, leave the engine in neutral, and use the side/stern line to pull yourself back wards until you are out from between the other boats.  This worked great, but then the boat would not turn and only wanted to back out of the Marina.  Welcome to old long keeled boats!  So we backed out of the Marina and as we did the rivers tide quickly caught us.  We let the tide turn the boat and we quickly powered out and against the tide to get turned around.  All unplanned, but it looked ‘oh so’ professional.

We had a great sail down the coast to Leixoes.  The wind and waves were behind us all the way.  Smooth south on the Portugese trade winds.

We were bouncing Porto or Leixoes back and forth.  Porto was in town, but the wrong side, expensive but on the river and probably a nice view.  Porto can only be accessed in fair weather on a rising tide over a sand bank.  Lexioes was in a big industrial port, cheaper, but a bus ride into the centre of Porto.  Lexieos is acessable in all weather and all tides.  When we were level with Leioxoes we flipped a coin.  Leeioxoes won.

As usual we tried to hail the Marina, no response.  We found the entrance very small and hard to see at the furthest southerly point of the Marina.  But as we entered we found a pair of Marina staff waiting for us pointing us to an empty slip.  We passed many empty slips, but they directed us to a tiny spot deep inside.  Wish us luck getting out of this one.

The Marina is ‘nothing special’.  In fact it appears a little run down.  There is a great beach next door, dogs allowed.  I had a lovely run on it with the wind and waves pounding in.  The town is a ‘working’ town.  Apartment blocks and new builds mixed with some cute simple older homes and buildings.  There are some fortifications.  We still had fun getting lost through the windy streets.

We are off to visit the town of Porto tomorrow.  We ran into Constantine, a neighbour from our first day in Viana do Costelo, and he says the town in lovely and he is staying a couple more days.  We saw some boats anchored just outside the Marina.  There is no place to land a dingy for the day, but as a night stop over you could do it, or use it to wait for the tide to get up the river to Porto.

The Marina does have WiFi.  So we can finally use our boaster and use the computers in the comfort of our boat and close to electrical hook ups.  The down side is the humans ‘killed’ one of the computers.  While topping up with water one of them decided to rinse the decks and one of the windows, right above the computer, was open.  Despite leaving it to dry for 24 hours it still will not work.  Unfortunately it contains all the pictures and video I took of the Ria’s and was hoping to add to the blog.

I will add what I have and see about finding a repair or hard drive transfer in Lisbon.  Enjoy the updates I do have.