Oeiras: North bank of the Tagus, a bit downstream of Lisbon and rather a nice marina – well the only one that had brought us fresh bread in the mornings anyway. The local tour included the historic gunpowder factory, the Poets Park (nice but no idea about any Portuguese poets) then an interesting wine tour and tasting – they have started a heritage vineyard and winery to avoid losing their local tradition. We went to the World Heritage site at Sintra on the local bus. It’s a fabulous place, up in the hills do much cooler, and you could easily spend 4 or 5 days going round the various palaces and castles and other sights and doing walks. We chose to walk to the Old Town via the Sculpture trail and go round the Historic Palace of Sintra, ignoring the blandishments of multitudes of folk wanting to take you on bus tours, horse drawn carriage tours, Tuk Tuk yours etc. With transportation no doubt you could get round more attractions but sometimes it’s nicer to just do it yourself. Anyway the Palace was wonderful, everything labelled in English, Portuguese and Japanese so no problem. The most amazing ceilings; and the strange looking white chimneys turned out to be the special flues for the huge kitchens, the palace being built to entertain hundreds of people. After the palace and gardens we had a nice lunch and eventually the clouds parted enough to at least get a picture of the Moorish castle on the mountain top. The last day in Oeiras was mainly spent doing jobs such as glueing up the headlining (it comes down in the heat), putting up the Bimini that we hadn’t used for 3 years, organising the navigation for the next leg and lastly painting our boat name on the harbour wall – a very rush job done while it was blowing a gale, so it won’t win any prizes in the competition. I had time for a 2 minute swim (it was lovely) before we went for dinner.

ARC Portugal Leg 5: Nazare to Oeiras (pronounced Where ash). It was Steve’s birthday so he got tea in bed and card and present early to be in time for the start. It was a gate start and the yellow shirts sang Happy Birthday as we motored between the breakwaters. No wind again, but it came after a couple of hours do we were able to sail gently on a reach close to Fisk see pic. Came onto a slow run wing and wing as we passed Peniche, ETA was after 2200 then more wind had us bowling along merrily with dolphins in attendance. Even more wind (though we were pre warned by those ahead via the WhatsApp group) had us heavily reefed for the sail along the outer reaches of the river Tagus (or Tejo in Portuguese) to the finish at Oeiras. Conditions were rather lively for berthing in the marina which seemed to be short of space – we were sent to a strange berth well away from the other ARC yachts among small local boats. Others were put on the fuel pontoon. Luckily they found us a proper place later and we moved in the morning, just time to receive a delivery of fresh bread rolls with our boat name on the bag – we all got this every morning of our stay there.

ARC Portugal leg 4: Figueira da Foz to Nazare. Luckily a very short leg at about 33nm and there was no wind at all. The boats all lined up at the start ready to shove throttles forward. In fact we did sail slowly for the last hour and a half. Nazare is a pretty town, narrow streets, red tiled roofs, blue tiles on walls and cream tiles underfoot, as is typical in Portugal. Half the town is up on top of the cliff and the Ascenseur wasn’t working. Easy enough to run up the path though and visit the site of the “biggest surf waves in the world “ – in the season anyway, which is not now. The Clube Navale made us welcome in their marina.

Figuera da Foz: trip to Coimbra (via Cafe with excellent pastries) magnificent university library like something out of Hogwarts, and impressive 11th century Montemor castle. Next day guided tour of the city including Casino, Market, tasting local liquer, Bull Ring – our enthusiastic guide Miguel Almaro runs this as well as the yacht club and a barbershop. N.B. in Portugal (unlike Spain) they do not kill the bulls. We received a gift of salt – a local industry.

This leg was in the handbook as 55nm, 65nm on the briefing slides but actually nearer 75nm.  The evening dinner was 2100 and several boats left an hour early to be sure of making it in time.  The rest motored across the line at 0700, except Majic-L and Arrietta who managed to drift across under sail.  Special mention to Vibe who very correctly displayed a motoring cone.  The boats motored on in the sunshine.  Sayonara proposed a fishing competition – probably won by Majic-L.  As the wind came up Parasailors and similar coloured sails blossomed.  Those like us with white sails only had to wait for more wind – which did come eventually so that we had a nice broad reach and finished under sail, though the finishing line was a little confusing as no outer limit had been set.  The rally WhatsApp group set up by Andy (Mahi) came in useful for exchanging photos of the yachts under sail.  Hero of the final arrival in Figuera was Vibe who skilfully towed in Fisk whose engine had failed.  And everyone got there on time for the excellent sardine supper.

Trips from Povoa de Varzim: Historic city of Guimaraes (perhaps the birthplace of Portugal) and Tuk-tuk tour of Porto ( including visit to a Port wine lodge.

The wind came up just before the start (showing the sagacity of Rally Control setting what seemed to be a late start time) and we were able to sail across the line on starboard tack.  Soon boats started sprouting coloured sails as they bore away down the coast.  After some messing with a new system for the tack involving parrel beads round the furled Yankee, we set our cruising chute and dolphins came to play under the bow.  Unfortunately this was short lived as taking off the autopilot I managed to over correct, boat came up to wind apparent wind increased and the chute blew out.  Guess it was getting rather old and faded.  I dragged the bottom half out of the water and the got the top half down shoving it all down the forehatch.  No rest though as Steve was demanding the pole be set up so we could run wing and wing.  We changed the courtesy flag from Spanish to Portuguese at an appropriate moment – these days your watch and phone tell you when you are changing country. Wind increased so poled out headsail was a very suitable rig, had occasionally to jink round fishing floats. Towards Povoa further increase in wind had us and others reefing down and sailing main only after we gybed to head for the finish.  It’s now blowing a hooley and boats are queuing up to get their berths keeping rally control at full stretch.  Special mention goes to Freedom and Mahi who both got engine problems as they tried to motor in; Freedom heroically sailed to her berth while Mahi sailed off, hove to and fixed theirs.  Many thanks to crews of Sayonara and Mahi for hauling us into our place after a rather less than perfect approach.  Everyone arrived in good time for the Prize giving and dinner at 2100.  A’asifa won Division A again, Pirates Moon scored a well deserved victory in Division B and Northern lights got the prize for accurate prediction in the ETA competition.  And the dinner was delicious!

Expeditions in Spain 2: Castro de Santa Tegra 1st century BC hilltop ruins and viewpoints then Molinos de Folon old water mills followed by a fantastic traditional Galician lunch.

Of course you are supposed to walk there not go by bus. Some obviously cycled – flocks of (matching) Lycra clad mountain bikers filling the narrow streets of the old town, don’t think they cycled back though as there was a big bus with a bike trailer.

It was a beautiful morning for the start on Sunday 4 June, though not a lot of wind meant slow progress out of Plymouth Sound all in each others wind shadow. Once clear many boats set pretty coloured down wind sails and slowly pulled away. We were feeling a bit rusty and the cruising chute hadn’t been out of the bag in 2 years so we contented ourselves with playing with the wind vane steering. Later it would have been too windy anyway. We enjoyed a favourable wind giving a broad reach or occasionally a run until Wednesday afternoon. It changed direction so that we were close hauled sailing as close to the wind as we could. Off Finisterre it died away so we started the engine and motorsailed, later able to sail again as it came back. With our small engine we can’t motor into a big sea with any speed, it’s faster to sail. Wednesday night and Thursday it was quite hard work tacking back and fore, there were several squalls and cloudbursts to contend with. We were pleased to arrive in Bayona at 16.27 local time (in the middle of another cloudburst) and we’re grateful for the welcome from World Cruising yellow shirts Alvaro and Bev. A few days later at the prizegiving dinner we were absolutely astonished to find that we had placed 1st in Division B. This was entirely due to our having used our engine a lot less than our competitors and therefore got less time penalties. The other slightly smaller Westerly yacht, Pirates Moon from Guernsey, placed 3rd so it was definitely a case of Westerlys rule!