Here's the long delayed summary of our time in Porto Santo..
Porto Santo is the smaller of the two main islands in the Archipelego of Madeira; Madeira itself being the largest island in the group. There are a few smaller ones about five miles to the south east of Madeira, collectively the Ilhas Desertas - no prizes for translating the name! It is possible to visit the larger of the that group - Grand Desertas, and indeed Tony and I did so in Arctic Smoke in 2015 and if you want to know more you can read my blog of that trip Adventures of Arctic Smoke navigate to May 2015;using the links in the side bar.
Porto Santo is extremely arid in contrast to Madeira's mostly lush landscape, except as you will see in my future post of our brief stay there this time, on the extreme north east of the island. Porto Santo's most striking feature is though it's long yellow sandy beach which runs down almost the entire length of its south eastern coast. This to is in stark contrast to Madeira which only has scraps of black volcanic sand on its rugged coast. As a consequence it's a favourite place for those from the main island to visit - a ferry plies back and forth twice a day between the two islands which are about 40 miles apart.
When Tony and I visited in 2015 - see the above link it was very early in the season - only May in fact - we had, perhaps a little foolishly, crossed Biscay in April in bighting south westerly winds with Arctic Smoke"s self steering still not operational! On arriving at Porto Santo we found it almost completely deserted - we were the only visiting boat in the Marina.
Back to the present...This time it was a complete contrast. The marina was full and we had to anchor in the bay outside which was actually most pleasant and much cheaper - for 6 euros a night we had access to the free showers and free laundry. Mind you we ony used the showers once and the laundry was always backed up so we never used it.
We spent our first two days on the boat at anchor owing to the mildly inclement weather but consoled by Tony's cake and Howard's Jack Daniels!
On the Tuesday we finally got ashore in the afternoon and walked into town - Vila Baleira - along the beach. We had a very pleasant and cheap lunch and wandered around the charming but now quite bussling little town which was in great contrast to the quiet streets Tony and I meandered around in 2015.
Deciding it would be nice to explore the island we hired two electric scooters for the following day, at the very reasonable rate of 20 euros each.
And so Wednesday saw us tour the island on two surprisingly nippy electric scooters...
Stopped for lunch at an excellent but reasonably priced meal at the family run (3-4 generations) Torres restaurant at Camacha on the north side of the island.
The last section of our tour was the south end where a number of low rise hotels have been established fairly sensitively.
Afterwards we walked back to the marina and had another good value dinner at the marina cafe
Thursday was supposed to be a laundry and jobs day but the laundry was backed up and not many jobs got done. I did however manage to scrub of the seaweed beard that had taken hold around the water line. I did this from the dinghy and in the process was attacked by a fish! Some sort of snapper. Only about 6 inches long. The little chap had clearly decided that Bonny's bottom was his own private property and wasn't going to tolerate any intruders on his patch, so as my hand went in the water to do the scrubbing, the little bugger repeatedly tried to take bites out of the back of it. Repeated slamming of the water above him with my scrubbing brush failed to deter him for more than a second or two before he was back for more. In the end I had to resort to wearing a thick rubber glove to protect my hand. Perhaps the Orca's resistance movement has started to spread to the fish population too. Imagine Oceans full of creatures intent on wreaking revenge on mankind!!
After picking Mick up from his failed laundry mission (honestly you just can't get the staff these days) we stopped off and had a chat with single hander Rob from the Walton Backwaters just up the Essex coast from the Medway, on board his Seacracker of around 10 Metres and as ancient as Bonny, if not more so, anchored just outside the harbour breakwater.
Rob's an amazing character with half a dozen Atlantic circuits under his belt including his first many years ago in a home built 22 foot boat which was wrecked in the Carribean during a hurricane! He gave us lots of tips about places to visit and avoid in the Carribean including in Barbados which we had earmarked as our likely first island. So if we get there in time for Christmas we now know the best place to visit for Christmas lunch - the Lagoon Resort at Port St Charles!
Rob had intended to start his latest trip last year but abandoned it after getting to Falmouth due to reports of Orcas misbehaving in the Wester Approaches!
I cooked a Pork Belly dinner on board that evening which was enjoyed by all the crew.
Not sure what happended to Friday but on Saturday we sailed to Quinta do Lorde, Madeira, just a day's sail away.
No comments:
Post a Comment