The Nortada

After a few days in Porto, we were treated to our favourite wind for this coast – a fresh, but not too fresh north or northwester – and so we set about preparing for our next hop south. With low pressure systems often tracking a touch north of the Iberian peninsula and into Biscay, winds on their southern side are frequently deflected south along the coast producing the Nortada, or north wind, a feature of the west coast of Spain and Portugal in summer.

This is one of the reasons (among so many others!) why wind surfing and kite surfing are so popular here. For sailing boats, it is a perfect wind for slipping leisurely south, and, as long as it doesn’t get too fresh, it also means that, in most areas, one can comfortably stay within the 20m depth zone recommended for avoiding inquisitive orcas.

And for us, the Nortada delivered! Blowing at a delightful 10-15kt, mostly from the north, and increasing to a brisk 15-20kt later in the afternoon, she whisked us along with sails poled out, pretty much in a perfect straight run at an average of 6kt from Porto to our next stop at Figueira da Foz. By now, the coastline had completely transformed from the mountainous rias to something more akin to the Dutch North Sea coast – long white beaches backed by low lying dunes; the Dutch crew member (F) started to feel right at home!

A blast from the past

Aside from needing a spot to overnight, our reason for pulling in at Figueira da Foz, or ‘Figtree River mouth’, was to catch up with Peter Roebeling, an ex-CSIRO colleague of ours. While at CSIRO, we had all worked together on some groundbreaking projects in the Great Barrier Reef water quality improvement space. Peter had left for the University of Aveiro (a short distance from Figuera da Foz) in 2007, and this seemed like a good chance to catch up!

Setting a date and place for a meeting like this is always a bit tricky on a sailing boat as you can never tell exactly when you’ll be where but, after a few emails and messages while we were in Porto, we had it narrowed down closely enough in Figuera. What followed was a great lunchtime catch-up on Yuma. We sat chatting for hours, it was as if we had only seen each other yesterday, and all of a sudden it was evening and Peter had to rush off.

The biggest waves in the world

The next hop along the coast was to Nazaré, a place world-famous for its giant waves, and more recently for the fact that these giant waves are being surfed. In 2024, a 28.57m wave was surfed here, not by an Australian, not by a Hawaiian, not by a Californian and not by a Brazilian or any other surfing nation, but by a German, Sebastian Steudtner – go figure!

I’m sure he isn’t the only German surfer but they certainly aren’t a nation renowned for their surfing culture and traditions so it is a bit surprising, and pleasing, that he holds this particular record. Good for him!

Luckily for us, these enormous waves only occur in winter, so as we tucked in close around this infamous headland we were exposed to nothing more serious than a gentle swell. I’m not sure how badly Yuma would surf on a 28m wave but I’m guessing that it would be pretty close to as badly as could possibly be.

Of course, once ashore, we walked out to checked out the Big Wave point and to visit its Wave Museum. The point was there but unfortunately, the Wave Museum in the Forte de S. Miguel Arcanjo was closed for renovations. Most things are closed for renovations if we want to visit them so this came as no surprise.

Down on the beach to the north, a gaggle of tattooed American surfie pilgrims tried to surf the very modest waves but soon enough had to admit that it wasn’t really worth their effort.

Nazaré itself is a pleasant town given over almost entirely to tourism; beach soccer in the summer and big wave surfing in the winter. This makes it an easy place to settle into and with the dramatic headland, the long beaches and the quaint upper and lower towns, it is easy to see why its popular.

The Nortada gone crazy

The Nortada still had a bit of puff in it for a few days, so after a couple of nights in Nazaré, we decided to go for a long hop down to Oeiras, near Lisbon. This proved to be mostly a very comfortable and quick poled-out sail, all the way down to Cabo da Roca, with just a little bit of a wrinkle in the final stretch from there to Oeiras.

Here, the weather forecast had predicted gusts up to 30kt, not at all an unexpected thing in the acceleration zone on the leeward side of a headland. This is near Praia do Guincho, one of the most popular locations for all kinds of surfing in Portugal, because of locally strong Nortadas, so we should perhaps have been doubly forewarned about what was about to happen. Oh well, you live and sometimes you even manage to learn.

We rounded Cabo da Roca without any excitement and as we came up beneath the cape the wind picked up for a while and then dropped back down. Well, that was easy we thought and began to relax– ha! what silly possums. We were sailing along merrily, when a little while later and well clear of the cape, the wind suddenly pitched up from 12kt to 35kt and stayed there on our beam for 20min. Without any warning, with 41kt gusts and with Yuma wearing full sail (we thought we were beyond the acceleration zone), it’s fair to say that we were terribly unprepared when we shouldn’t have been.

Happily, we managed to get ourselves out of this rather tricky situation. Yuma got up to an unprecedented speed-over-ground of 11.9kt before we got ourselves sorted. Not good, and a lesson re-learned the hard way – reef early, reef often and reef even on the suspicion of threat.

Half a white-knuckled hour later, having rounded the next cape, Cabo Raso, towards Oeiras, it seemed that we were out of the woods. The wind had died down and, as we were early, we needed to wait for the tide to slow in order to get in through the channel at Oeiras, we decided to heaved-to off the bay in Cascais in a meager 6kt of breeze.

What we didn’t realise was that after Cascais, a wide bay opens up to a valley in the NW providing a perfect acceleration funnel for that cunning Nortada. So, after a quiet bit of heaving-to, we set off again in the dark only to all of a sudden get slammed again by a sustained 30kt wind. Main all the way down the traveller, sails well out, this wind still had us down on our ear pretty much until just before entering the marina, whereupon it disappeared just as abruptly as it came. Luckily, after all the kerfuffle we didn’t have to manoeuvre too much in the marina itself, as our allocated berth was lined up almost straight with the entrance. Phew! Time for a few days recovery in the city of Lisbon.