We're not fans of marinas and the problem with the Portuguese coast, lovely as it is - is that it's mostly marina hopping. However, there is the chance to anchor at the nature reserve formed by a group of islands just offshore from Perniche. They need settled weather, and you are anchoring in deep water with a reputation of poor holding, but we liked the sound of it.

It's a long sail from Porto - 113 nautical miles, but there was a little hint of wind - so we decided to go for it, as did a number of other boats. Wildeman, a Dutch boat, had been checking in when we arrived and they left ahead of us. Miese, a German boat left behind us. We all tried to sail. We managed most of the day under parasailor, and swapped to just genoa overnight. By dawn, the wind had gone and we were motoring on one engine as we were not in a rush. The overnight drama was the loss of the contents of the water tank into the starboard bilge and overboard! A fitting had failed and the water pump and merrily pumped the tank dry. I sorted the fitting and we replaced the water using the watermaker. The root cause is likely a failed PRV on our hot water side, and as we motored, the pressure increased until the fitting popped. Glad it was easy to find and we know we needed to fit a bladder on the hot water side to stop the persistent weeping from the PRV which may be the cause of it failing (scale?). Anyway, all sorted whilst underway.

As the sun rose, after a beautiful night full of stars, planets, the Milky Way and the odd satellite (and no moon!), we were treated to a pod of dolphins under the bows. What a way to start the day :)

We arrived at Ilha da Berlenga and had a couple of goes at anchoring for the first time in a long time. It was quite tough to get a good hold and we succeeded with 45m of chain out in 20m of water, but we were still in close enough to be out of the Atlantic swell. After lunch, Miese arrived and we had a chat with them. They are doing the ARC+ so not long before they need to be in the Canaries! They told us the island was very quiet due to the season having ended but the caves were good. They were not wrong! The monastery was very beautiful, but you have to wonder what pirates would require them to fortify it so - Drake perhaps? We took the dinghy through one set to the other side of the island! We emerged by a little beach and another anchorage that looked a bit too tight for us. We were happy where we were... Next day would be an early start to catch the tide up the river Tejo to the marina in Lisbon.