1 September 2022 to 12 June 2023

We so vividly remember arriving in Portimão for the first time. It felt like a very important staging post on our journey, the place that Bill and Jon, the ferrymen from Burnham, had talked about sailing their boat to and that we had promised to visit when we waved goodbye to Essex marina.

We remember it too for the ignominious start to our first visit when, as we approached the river entrance, we couldn’t get the genoa furled in. We had to head back out to sea to fix it before we could enter through those now so familiar markers at the entrance to the Rio Arade to anchor off Praia Grande.

Little did we know that our GPS screen of the anchorage would become peppered with markers of all the spots we have anchored out there since or that the yellow and orange buildings of the Tivoli Hotel that surrounds the marina would become the backdrop to somewhere that would start to think of as home.

We also vividly remember the feeling when we first arrived back in Portimão having successfully obtained our D7 visas, allowing us to stay in Portugal until we got our residence. The moment we left the airport we knew we’d made the right decision. And not just the feeling, the smells and the sights – the warm, wood smoky air, the sardines cooking, the salty air through the hatch, the bright orange cliffs, that warm delicate light at sundown.

But really what made it home was the people we met. For the best part of two years we have lived amongst a group of people who, through all the usual ups and downs of life, have become our community, our family.

Together we have celebrated milestone birthdays

and congratulated others on becoming residents and land owners.

We celebrated a second Christmas in Portimão surrounded if not by our real family but by our sailing family.

and saw in another new year together.

Another Easter

and another jacaranda season came and went and we were still there!

Together as a community we weathered heart attacks and nasty falls, family dramas, the loss of family members and much loved pets – stuff that creates bonds, whether you like it or not. For our part, after 6 years of never being in one place for more than a maximum of a few months at a time, we did things that tied us to landlife for the first time – we signed an annual marina contract, we bought a car, we became resident in another country. We sometimes wondered whether we were ever going to be able to leave.

But deep down we knew we weren’t ready to bolt the proverbial satellite dish to the pontoon and the work we were doing to Pintail was preparing her for heading out into oceans and distant anchorages not staying in marinas. Our journeying spirit was still strong. This hiatus had always ever been just that – a little respite from constant travel, not necessarily of our choosing but very welcome all the same.

Our marina contract would run out at the end of May so we started preparing ourselves and Pintail to get back to sea. Neither was quite as easy as we planned. As the deadline to leave our berth on pontoon F loomed, both practically and emotionally it seemed that we were caught in Portimão’s grip but bit by bit we started to untangle ourselves.

During May, we had another visit from Chris (remember the little old lady that went to sea?), which, while showing her around, enabled me to say goodbye to some of my favourite spots on the Algarve – Alvor, Sines, Ferragudo and Monchique.

As a farewell treat, our pontoon neighbour Fernando took us out on his beautiful old wooden boat, which in a former life transported port wine from the Douro valley.

And then, with the installation of our solar arch finally completed, we could take a shakedown sail down to Culatra to test all our new systems and for just one more week amongst the sand islands we’ve come to love so much.

For posterity, we returned to the beaches we had visited on our first time in the islands and hung out for a week just off Farol. This place will remain firmly at the top of our list of favourite places ever.

Back in Portimão again, we had more than a few leaving drinks, parties, lunches and dinners – to the point that everyone was probably getting bored with the whole thing and wishing us gone!

Thank you Portimão for being the home we didn’t know we needed for so long and to Jill, Neil, Martha and Sadie, Teresa and Mal, Jan and Rod, Rainy, Liz, Lynne and John, Annemieke and Steve, Maike and Douwe, Charlie and Ben, and Bill and Jon for all the love and laughs. We have made friends for life and miss you all already. We have no doubt we will be back on the Algarve one way or another to catch up for another beer at the Top Bar or another coffee at the Yacht Club.

But tear ourselves away we had to and, after a final couple of nights tucked in next door to SV Alice May and one more farewell cup of tea with Jill, Neil, Maike and Douwe on pontoon D, we slipped silently out of the marina at first light on 13 June as ready as we would ever be to start the next adventure…