Isla de Canela

Well we had some interesting moments while on the River Guardiana, that first afternoon there was a British yacht a Moody that was swinging around a heck of a lot and it turned out was dragging his anchor around, he bumped a wooden boat in front a couple of times and was then out in the middle of the channel with anchor down and engine going, not sure what he was up to then. After about an hour he motored up river anchor still down and faffed for another hour before settling. That evening on the low tide we saw a lot more birds and some other fish possibly trout trying to breathe air, jumping repeatedly out the water. After a quiet night the next morning we rowed to the towns and walked up to the 2castles but they were closed, views from Spanish side, which was a lot higher were very good, then coffee and as tide had turned we rowed back for lunch then launched kayaks to go upriver with the tide, we scrumped some apples and pomegranates. John has not deseeded a pomegranate before! When we got back to the boat the wind had picked up and the wind with the tide appeared to have caused us to drag our anchor but it had re secured. We moved back to our original spot for the evening and the wind died away.
There was a little rain but not much over night and next day we spent doing boat stuff I was sanding and varnishing John replaced a load of deck plugs that evening we headed to a place called the beach bar where we had been told people gathered on a Tuesday evening. It was a little odd with imported white sand on a bend on a stream that was damned to keep tide up but very nice for a coffee and a beer only problem was the return boat journey we had to do in the dark as we hadn't thought to bring a torch nor had we put on the boats anchor light, but we made it ok.
Early the following morning I woke with a start I could hear the anchor dragging quick up and on deck but no we were where we were supposed to be so what was the noise, then I noticed behind us and still heading down river the same British yacht that had been dragging before, am just glad he missed us and our anchor on his way past. There was a torch light but no noise of an engine we couldn't understand what he was doing? The next morning we could still see him he had stopped drifting just a little further down having miraculously missed everyone on his impromptu journey.
We headed off back down towards the coast we saw a lot more birds, mostly waders as it was a falling tide and we stopped off at a disused pontoon by a golf resort, we had a little mooch on shore but couldn't get far. GNR aka guns and roses or the Portuguese marine police visited us but all was good they loitered on the pontoon for about 2hours which was disconcerting but OK. Wonderfully quiet night with almost 12hours sleep and in the morning there were cows, cattle egrets, spoonbills, herons, plovers, terns and more only metres from the boat. We left on the low tide not realising just how low it was there was 1foot under the keel as we came off the pontoon, and headed only a short distance along the coast to a marina village so we could shop wash recharge etc before continuing on tomorrow.
First three photos are of our anchorage last night, four and five are of what we think was a practice for a fuel spill which was happening as we came down the river and 6 is what the plotter was showing us as we came down apparently we were on dry land.Read more