16 Sep 2015
37:57.1N 008:52.2 W Sines Anchorage
Last year, on the Portugal Rally, when we arrived here we had to spend the evening washing out the accessible parts of the bilge after the black water tank had leaked into it, so we missed out on the memorable meal our friends told us about the next day. A quick text to Rally pal Geoff confirmed the location of the Restaurante O Castello, just behind Vasco da Gama’s birthplace in the castle.
Dear reader, please bear with me as I digress slightly. Since my Open University days I have always enjoyed seeing things by comparison. Not only do I find it fun but two apparently quite different objects, places or concepts, approached from different angles can result in unforeseen similarities.
So when we arrived in Lagos, a few days later, we decided to have a meal out and during one of our shopping trips we happened by the open door of a little restaurant called Artistas Restaurante. The door was barred with two quality chairs upholstered with spotless blue covers. A notice in English and Portuguese read ‘Please come and enjoy our Garden.’ We decided we would do just that in the evening.
So we have Restaurante O Castello in Sines and Artistas Restaurante in Old Lagos. On entering the former a vast glass counter full with joints of meat, fish and glass bowls of fruit mousses and topped with bottles of wine greeted us, making me wonder if we had happened upon the local butchers by mistake. A man in his fifties, the owner I guess, greeted us and found us a table which abutted the one next to it. The room was say forty foot long and one end was the kitchen and half of one side housed the counter. So not much room and lots of tables crammed in. The decor was spotless and the fourteen little square tables could be moved easily to increase the number of seating places. Next to us a Portuguese man was just finishing his supper. Strangers engaged in conversation with their dining neighbours. The atmosphere was very friendly and social.
The menu was simple and could be guessed at from the counter contents. Rob had rump steak that he said could be mistaken for fillet as it was the most tender and tasty he had had for years, and I had a calamari skewer with peppers and onions and inch wide strips of sweet and tender calamari seared so the edges crinkled like brown lace. The service was almost instant and the turnover at the tables was brisk. A quick meal and the diners were off, but not before our Portuguese neighbour said I must put lots of olive oil on my calamari to keep it moist. Our new neighbours started their holiday by renting a hire car at Faro Airport and were coast hopping as far a Porto before flying home from Lisbon. They ordered sardinhas and were not sure what to do with them. We laughed and made a few suggestions, “Head off, tail off, open along the back”.
We sipped the blanco wine from the Douro region as the kind man topped us up before returning the bottle to the fridge with all the other open ones. I wondered if he ever poured the wrong one at table, but then there was no room for the bottle on the table anyway. The kitchen organisation was brilliant with starters, salads and cooked veg all prepared in advance and the latter kept in a heated cupboard. The staff, family members I think, were very busy and smiling, sharing jobs with a liquid style that comes from experience and working together in harmony. In just over an hour we were done.
By contrast in the Artistas in Lagos the waiter encouraged us to pause between courses and we got to know a lot about him. From the Ukraine, his Russian mother and Ukrainian father brought him to safe and beautiful Portugal when he was nine and he has now taken on the nationality. He learned English from children’s programmes with English sub-titles and from working with tourists for years. The house was built on the ruins left by the 1755 earthquake and the garden was surrounded by a sandstone wall and dotted with a subtle and effective mixture of real and artificial plants that blended different hues of green. White LED lights shone up into the branches of the trees and green lights shone down from the cream umbrellas over the tables. There was no question of chatting to the neighbouring tables as they were insulated by the space and potted trees around them. The atmosphere was serene, quiet and restful. The crudity of seeing the unprepared food was eradicated and only in its most sophisticated, nouveau cuisine form, was it brought to the table by smartly uniformed waiters to whom the name of the game was refinement and perfection.
While we were still menu gazing the chef came up with delicate crab pate and three types of bread, followed by carrot, orange and vanilla soup accompanied by half a quails egg, broccoli and roasted tofu in soy sauce.
Then, to start with (!) I had black prawns smothered in some sort of froth with curry flavoured rice and Rob had different cheeses, then he tucked into pork medallions on seared aubergine slices and I had home-made pasta with truffles and saffron stems. The preparation again was done largely beforehand but the attention to detail reached artistic rather than rustic standards. In between courses the chef’s home-made lime sorbet cleansed the palate and for pudding we accepted his invitation, as written on the menu, to wander through their patisseri choice of tiny pastries, sorbets and sliced fruit in sweet liquor.
The prices also were at high contrast. The O Castello was yet another sufficient and affordable meal. The Artistas, we decided at the time, would be our sixth wedding anniversary celebration to justify the expense and the latter experience lasted nearly three hours. Both dining experiences were worthwhile, enjoyable and faultless in our view. Vive la contrast!
Now, back to reality. On the Sines evening I had decided to wear a long, body hugging horizontally stripped dress. Nice and easy to put on by just pulling it up sufficiently far for the stretchy fabric to cover most of my top. Remember the saying, ‘What goes up…….’? The evening was cooling as we left O Castello so I slipped my cotton jacket on and we explored this historic town in its after dark character. Vasco was gazing far out to sea from his plinth, other restaurants were full of people eating while they watched football and as we wandered back to the beach a group of people were approaching us. I was nice and warm now so happily unzipped my jacket looking forward to some cool air when I realised said bodice had now become a waist band. Rob, as you can imagine, was beside himself “Sort yourself out you 17th century tart!” The oncomers smiled as well.
16 Sep 2015 12:38:10
37:00.05N 08:56.55W Sagres anchorage
12th September. No wind, but the tedium of motoring towards the south west point of Portugal was broken by dolphins in the mood to play around Zoonie’s bow and chocolate brown shearwaters, banking like spitfires, their wingtips not quite touching the water. We were approaching Cabo de Sao Vicente and, unlike last year when we had to return to England, this time it would be another significant point on our southward journey.
We anchored just around the corner from Sao Vicente, the south west tip of Europe under the protection of an ancient fort built on top of the Sagres peninsular. All around us mullet floated with their backs just above sea-level glinting in the sun. We secretly hoped none would take the bait on the end of our line and of course they didn’t as they are suction feeders.
Every year thousands of migratory birds travel from Northern Europe to the South Atlantic and find a diversity of food and a safe place to rest on this headland within the fenced boundary of the fort. We wandered slowly around watching the dedicated local fishermen perched on top of the steep cliffs, their bikes resting against the wooden fence designed to keep visitors safe from the edge. One fisherman had lowered himself halfway down on a rope. I only hope his catch made the risk worthwhile.
The tender issue of the tender was re-kindled when Rob discovered a pin prick hole in one of the floats. “Look, see the bubbles, the beast is unreliable”. I could see where this was going. “But it’s only letting air out of the float, not water into the bottom. With all the inflating and deflating we do anyway what does a bit more matter. It still has its integrity as far as floating is concerned.” He blinked his eyes tight shut, so I disappeared below to put the kettle on, and took my thinking a stage further.
Rob and I don’t argue because we both know that the very best argument lines come the next day when the flame of fury has extinguished itself. Instead, and I speak for myself, I fathom (appropriate verb eh) out what he is thinking, get over the fact I might have to agree with him, and seek the path that will be best for all, in this case the crucial subject of transfers to land from Zoonie or an additional craft to the life raft in the case of extreme survival. One of my worries was the new tender would be so very stealable in certain parts of the world like the Caribbean and Panama.
I had two cards yet to play. First one. “You see darling you have so skilfully mended the existing two splits in the seam, and from the other tender we saw in Seixal that is where the weakest points are, it seems such a waste to discard it now.”
There ensued an afternoon period of us being extremely polite to each-other. We motored the few miles left to Lagos. I wondered what ever happened to little Maddy McCann, taken from her family somewhere along this coast. We have recently swapped kindles so Rob can read about the late seventeenth century privateers and buccaneers Dampier and Woodes Rogers whose paths we will share later on and I am reading Paul Heiney’s account of his voyage of personal discovery in the wake of his son Nicholas, whom Paul said learned more from ocean travel in 5 years than Paul has in forty, before taking his own young life in what the coroner accurately said was “When the balance of his mind was disturbed.” I wondered what Rob would discover about himself on our voyage.
On arrival at our berth in Lagos Marina, having fuelled up, I was led gently by the hand to the chandlery at Sopramar Nautical Services, ostensibly to look at a new cockpit speaker for the VHF. Guess what. As I type this Rob is happily pumping up his new toy and yes I got to play my trump card, the old dinghy is washed, dried, deflated and bagged and stored safely up forward as a Plan B.
6 days ago 12:55:07
37:05.86N 008:39.68W Languishing in Lagos
16th September. The rainy Wednesday in Lagos we had been expecting arrived and seemed to reflect our rather dismal mood. We were feeling indecisive about where to head for the next day and how to spend the remaining time before we started to head for the Canaries in the second week of October. In a sense we had almost too much choice on this welcoming coast of fine anchorages and harbours.
The day was not unproductive though as the blog was up to date by midday, and so was Scrabble with Sue and we finished watching Shogun in the evening, and it is only natural that moods do not remain constant all the while.
17th Sept. All was better, us and the weather. Soon after setting off the gentle wind moved to over 120’ from her bow so Rob and I went to the foredeck to rig the cruising chute which took 25 minutes from my passing it up to Rob from the focsle to when she was pulling us along at over six knots. This continued into the afternoon until the wind increased to over 15 knots and helming became difficult. Mindful not to overstrain anything we reverted to the genoa and gave up a knot or two of speed. We sped past sandy beaches, green woodland, orange sandstone cliffs and the conglomerations of block graph high rises of Vilamoura and Albufeira amongst others. Well marked fish farms over artificial reefs and the usual lobster pots made us keep a good lookout ahead.
It had been a beautiful day, cloudless sky, super sailing and as Rob popped the anchor down into a deep pool in Praca Largo Lagoon, the orange ball of the sun slid its entire circumference from bottom to top limbs below the horizon. Within 30 minutes it was dark at just after eight. The dark nights are almost 12 hours long now.
Ilha da Culatra reminded me of what Sandbanks in Poole must have looked like before the developers moved in and spoiled it forever. Over 3000 people live on the island in tiny, smart single story shacks with only a ferry connection to Faro and Olhau. All around us sandbanks and mudflats revealed themselves as the tide drops so birds and men alike could fish.
Very close to us a fisherman was feeding out his drift net through a stainless steel hoop on his little boat. Red weights suspended the net a metre or so above the sea bed and all that could be seen from above was a single white float to mark the spot from which he would haul in the net. I made a mental note to steer well away from that area when we left the next morning even though it would probably be well beneath our keel.
In the long dark hours the engines of fishing boats could be heard coming and going along with the cries of curlews.