Cascais

The night was cool and having been in the Mediterranean for the past four weeks I had almost forgotten what the Atlantic weather was like. We began to notice the moisture and drop in temperature once we left Gibraltar. It was now time to start getting used to it again.

We passed close to Cape Espiche, about nineteen miles to the south of Lisbon and now we were able to set a course direct to Cascais and watched its light disappear astern before it was swallowed up again by the fog.

The marina at Cascais is about 14 miles to the west of Lisbon and the town has good train connection with Lisbon. There wasn't much to recommend the few small marinas nearer to Lisbon in the pilot book. That together with Cascais being further to the west and closer to home had sealed the deal.

I kept Maeve company at various stages during her watch, especially the latter part as the fog had thickened and cut visibility quite bit.
We were getting close to the Tagus River which was turning out to be quite a busy shipping lane. We could hear but not see, shipping sounding their fog horns but luckily none seemed to be near us.
Dave then took over the watch and kept a sharp lookout as we motored parallel to, but about six miles off the coast.

As dawn arrived the day began heating up and the fog slowly began to burn off.
We passed many anchored bulk carriers either waiting to go upriver to Lisbon or just waiting ‘for orders’.

Visibility had improved to about two miles with the anchored ships appearing out of the mist as we got closer and we could see the dull shapes of the ships moving slowly upriver towards Lisbon. There seemed to be a one way system in place that morning as all the shipping was heading upriver and none coming down. We listened closely to the port radio which luckily was using English so we were able to understand the shipping movements and the conversations with the pilot boats.

Due to the amount of ships heading upriver we had to cross the channel quickly and at right angles to the shipping. As we aimed for the ships I felt like a submarine commander aiming his torpedoes during the war.
When we got to the edge of the channel we aimed for the bows of a ship to gauge the speed and by the time we were close, that ship would have past and the ship behind it would then be crossing our bows and we would slip under its stern and be across and out of the way before the bows of the next ship arrived to turn us into two separate pieces. That was the plan and it worked!

We then motored the last few miles into the marina and tied up to the reception pontoon at 09.30 and I headed up to reception which was manned or should I say womened by four receptionists all of whom seemed to have two or more languages.

The place wasn’t cheap even though at this time of the season it was only about half full but I sucked it up as we were only going to be there for 2 night and the facilities were very good.

We were allocated our berth but first I wanted to fill up with diesel before we left the reception berth. Once bitten, twice shy?
There was a large motor cruiser filling up in front of us and there seemed to be a problem with the pumps which was delaying matters. Just when I thought he was finished he went around to the other side and stuck the nozzle into another tank! It was another hour and over 3000 litres later before the nozzle was handed over to us. Glad I wasn’t paying!

We headed to our allocated berth and reversed in, Dave hopped off and we were soon tied up. It had been very hot while we were waiting to fill up so we immediately headed to the showers to freshen up and then met up at one of the restaurant’s to have a late breakfast.

In the early afternoon we got the train up to Lisbon and it reminded me of being on the Cobh train, taking the same length of time to get to Lisbon as our one at home takes to get to Cork.

We wandered around the city admiring the old trams which are still run on one of the lines as a tourist attraction while the modern ones run on the main lines.
Also popular are colourful tuk tuk type of taxis which you could hire for a tour around the city but they also operated as ordinary taxis. These are tricycles having motorcycle style front and are colourfully painted but not as decorated as the Indian versions.

The European Soccer Championships were on and we had great difficulty getting a coffee at the few bars we tried. Perhaps looking for service while Portugal were playing Hungary was not our best move.
Later we wandered into one of the main squares near the river and found Carlsberg had sponsored a large screen in the centre. There were plenty of restaurants lining the edges of the square and we planted ourselves down at one of them and found the staff here actually wanted customers and we soon had some food in front of us while Dave and I half watched the match.

Just as we were leaving we discovered that Ireland were just starting their match against Italy but as it was getting late we didn’t stay and instead got the train back to Cascais.

As we were walking along a street through Cascais towards the marina we saw on a TV outside a restaurant and the match was still on. Just was we stopped to look, Ireland scored against Italy. We had to stay and watch the last 10 minutes and then wandered back to Eureka in a very happy mood,
Result, Ireland 1 - Italy 0.

We had an early night as Dave was flying out next morning and we were seeing him off while at the same time meeting Maeve's sister Norma, who was flying in to join us till Porto.

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