We anchored our new Lagoon 46 for the first time.
And where?!? In the Douro river, in the heart of the city of Porto.
We had only planned for a quick stop in Porto, which turned out to be 17 unforgettable days.
On our first morning in the Marina in Porto we went to explore the neighbourhood. The nearest little town was São Pedro de Afurada. We strolled around this little Portuguese town with its typical houses with tiled facades and later had lunch at one of the local grill restaurants.
It was lovely to see how our kids started to connect more to nature and their environment by living on the water. On their own initiative, they started picking trash from the water. And even though they will not save the entire planet this way as they like to think, it’s definitely a very good start.
We had travelled to Portugal many times before with our camper but we never stayed this far north so this was our first time visiting Porto and I knew we were gonna love it because we love the Portuguese culture and architecture and we are also big fans of the port wine. Instead of taking a taxi to the city centre, we tried going with our own little taxi boat, we took our dinghy to go upriver and see if we could leave it somewhere near the centre. We got permission to tie up our dinghy at the taxi dock, which was right where we needed to be. It was a perfect parking spot in the centre of Porto.
By the end of the week, the weather deteriorated and a storm was heading our way. We didn’t want to take any risk and didn’t want our trip to the South of Portugal to be too unpleasant so we stayed until we were sure the weather was favourable for us to leave.
During the heavy weather, it was very unpleasant to stay in the marina, the boat rocked against the pontoon the entire time, which caused a lot of unpleasant noises and movement on the boat. Sleeping became almost impossible, so we decided to anchor in the Douro river. This would be our first time anchoring. What an experience! We sailed up the Douro river and under the famous Maria Pia bridge.
It was exciting and also a bit thrilling, of course we knew the bridge was high enough, but from underneath it looked like we didn’t have much space left.
And then there was the anchoring in the river, with a high wall on one side and constant boat traffic on the other we had to anchor at the exact right spot, not easy with the current at that moment so we had to try several times.
I was especially worried about hitting the wall at night, so I slept with one eye open and was very surprised when our boat turned during the night because of the changing tide. We did not think it would have an influence up the river. But we had anchored well so all was safe. The next days were amazing. The view from our boat was wonderful and we were so close to the city.
As the weather cleared a bit we had a few fun days in the historical centre of Porto. We strolled through the steep streets of Porto and walked all the way up to the Cathedral, the views are beautiful up there. We visited the market and drank some delicious hot chocolate at Chocolateria das Flores. We also tried a new drink, Porto tonic, together with our new friends. And we visited Liam’s favourite place ‘Livraria Lello’ one of the most emblematic bookshops in the world.
As soon as the weather was favourable we left for the South, another storm would follow and we needed to be in Portimão to get our saildrive repaired. We stocked up on some delicious Portwine and the typical Portuguese sardines before leaving on our 3-day sailing trip to Portimão in the South of Portugal.
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00:00 Lunch in a local grill restaurant
01:35 Dinghy ride to the city of Porto
02:16 Ponte Luis
03:30 Visit Churchill's Port House
05:23 Kids #savetheocean
08:41 Drone images over the river Douro
09:35 Tina fell in the water
10:33 Dinghy ride on the river
13:37 Beach waves
14:50 High waves
16:52 Anchoring in the Douro River
17:52 Morning Douro river
18:57 Porto by night
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