Pushing South

Baiona is home to the Pinta, the fastest of the three ships in the Columbus expedition of 1492, and at 17M in length is only 2.4M longer than Sea Star, but was home to 26 souls as they ventured into the unknown.

The Pinta

Martin Pinzon

As you walk around this historic vessel, you have to wonder at the courage, hardships and belief of the captain and crew. Rodrigo de Triana was on watch at 2AM on Oct 12, 1492 when he spotted land, but as we all know, Columbus took the credit as leader of the expedition and poor Rodrigo was forgotten, as was the skipper of the Pinta, Martin Pinzon (Columbus was on Nina). Pinta was also first back with the news that a way had been found to India by going west from Portugal; hence the natives are still called Indians and West Indies got their name … A couple of years later (1495) another explorer, Vasco da Gama found a way around the Cape of Good Hope to India and became the first Viceroy of India, but more of him later.

Sea Star was not to be quite so adventurous and with the aid of GPS, we do have some uncertainty in our trip, but nowhere near what those guys faced. We were joined from Austin by Murray and were about to leave the Rias of Galicia and indeed Spain and venture off down the Atlantic coast to Portugal, known for rolling seas directly off the Atlantic (great surfing country), sardines and port. Our first port of call was Viana do Costello. High winds were forecast, so we opted for a good lunch with Sea Star safely tied up in the marina. Lunch (or should I say dinner) was soup followed by a wonderful fish plate with a whole sole each, two other unidentified fish (each), rice, potatoes and salad, all washed down with a litre and a half of the local wine, for €6 each. We were going to like Portugal!! It got even better when we found farturas (a sweet doughnut kind of thing with cinnamon) for €1 and our first port. Viana is a lovely little town which the rat race seems to have forgotten, almost a tourist town, but somehow under developed with a mix of deserted buildings and renovation projects with pockets of the modern high street names (even a tupperware store). The Portuguese are lovely people; so friendly, helpful and happy. They speak some (but enough) English, so we felt very much in a new country, although we had only travelled 30 miles from Baiona.

Next stop was Porto. Wow; this is a wonderful town. All the wine in the world that is permitted to call itself port comes from here and up the Douro river on whose mouth Porto sits. The entry up the river is littered with cellars with familiar names … Dow, Taylors, Cockburns, Sandeman, Offley, Grahams and more. All English names, as it was the English with an insatiable thirst who, unable to buy French wine in the mid 18th century  due to different politics, military conflict and ensuing trade wars and embargoes ventured further south to the Duoro valley to get their wine, but added grape brandy to the recipe to preserve the wine on the longer trip back to UK. It proved a very popular albeit headache inducing recipe, so the Brits snapped up the vineyards and the English names still dominate the south side of the Duoro river in Porto. If you have not been to Porto. Go to Porto. It is great. Away from the destructive conflicts of central Europe in the 20th century, the ancient Porto still remains, and the tourist companies have caught on, so the place was busy with cameras and smart phones taking photos in abundance. Out entry up the river was similarly equipped, but unaffected by crowds. By boat is the perfect way to enter Porto, especially as the sea fog lifts as you cruise up the river and the sun comes out to drench the colourful city. Magical. Jennifer our daughter joined us here and we said goodbye to Murray over dinner and Port. After the obligatory visit to a port house with a 5 port tasting, we ventured south to Lisbon. Not many harbours between Porto and Lisbon, so a 30 hour overnight sail, which should have been aided by the prevailing north to south trade winds, but we sailed on the only day in a decade with no wind, so motored most of the way ..