Cascais-Sines

After a last walk in the city, a very wet trip back in the dinghy and a super windy night, it’s time to leave Cascais and the Lisbon region for Sines. At 9am, Ludo weighs the anchor without problems: incredible it hasn’t moved in 6 days, with only 25 meters of 10mm chain, on the sand despite heavy winds around 30 knots that have been blowing every night.
Today, August 24, wind is again N-W, force 4-5. Weather is really without surprise here in Portugal, when you go south it’s a pleasure, except when the swell is too strong. On the contrary, each time we see a much heeled boat going up the wind, beating in each wave, we have a thought for them; we are the lucky ones, waves are pushing us...
We start with the traditional couple of hours of no wind...grrrr. We have to admit that’s rather useless to get up early in Portugal, it’s much better to stay late in bed and it won’t delay our arrival at the next call anyway. At the beginning of the afternoon, the wind starts freshening and we are speeding up 4, 5 then 6 knots on average with burst of speed at more than 10 knots in surfing waves. The approach of Sines is very similar to Leixoès or Dunkerque: factories smokestacks, industries, big cargos ships waiting for pilots. Here again the harbor is huge with LNG ships and super tankers..
There is a well protected little bay with a beach in a corner (lined by a small marina on the right and a tiny fishing harbor on the left), that’s where we drop the anchor when we arrive just before 9pm. We have sailed 55M today under a perfect blue sky.There’s a statue dominating the bay, it represents Vasco da Gama, Sines is his birth place. He explored India in the 15th century and he made Goa and the Malabar Coast Portuguese colonies, way before the hippy invasion in the 60-70’s and the more recent one by trance Goa lovers...