Horror night

We arrived in Lexios, the marina outside Porto, last thursday, four days ago. Since then gales have come and gone, the wind´s yesterday were abround 40 knots and waves around 8-10 meters.

When we came, the staff put us on alongside the outer pontoon just by the entrance to the marina. There was a severe gale approaching and we saw a lot of people putting out extra lines and using the big, old rusty moorings on the stone wall and about everything else they could find like flagpoles and lightposts up on the stone pier to secure their moorings. So we followed their brilliant example, just in case, with about ten ropes out which of two in the stone wall. The wind, SW, increased in the evening making Ingeborg doing the Rolly-Polly and pulling hard on the moorings even though we had bungies. Do I need to write that we didn´t get any sleep? Horror night. A hard slam made Hampus run on deck. The cleat from the pontoon hung in the water with the moorings. Luckily we were still tied to the stonewall but our cleat on the toe rail had taken some loads it wasn't designed for and was ripped off (screws bent 90 degrees, ripped out of the laminate and wood and one side of the cleat ripped in two) together with a piece of the rail. No big deal though. It's an easy fix and it could have been worse.

After much nagging at the marina staff they let us move into the marina and stay at a finger where we should have been put in the first place. They somehow got into their heads that Ingeborg is bigger than she is although she's far from the biggest boat here. Again, we put out mooring lines that made Ingeborg look like the spider in a web and we waited for the next gale. It came with 45-50 knots from the W and later NW. We did a lot better inside the marina and W and NW are better than SW here. Spent a nice day in Porto where we tried some Port....
More pictures below..

/Hampus & Lotta

The bridge...

...over to all the wine cellars. In the distance to the left E. G. you can read Sandeman.

...where every alley leads to a wine cellar. Free tastings at Croft!

Carried back...

Statue of Henry the navigator. The portuguese people have always been skilled sailors. We learnt that during the years they were occupied by Spain they kept their colonies, for example Brasil, a secret...