Estamos em Portugal! (english)

...which means that we are in Portugal!

Technically this is only half true. L'Olonnois is now anchored on the river "Minho", which is the westernmost border between Galicia (Spain) and Portugal.

We sailed yesterday from the Cies archipelago, located right offshore from Vigo. The navigation was easy until we reached the estuary of Minho. If you look at a chart of the area, you can see that the estuary is full of:
- rocks right below the surface ("skvaelpeskjaer" if I remember my Norwegian "Baatfoererproeve" correctly) on its Northern part, and
- moving sandbanks, emerging or not, on it Southern and Eastern parts, with water depths as low as 0.3m.

We found out we prefered to test our patience (being lifted from the sandbank by the tide) rather than the strengh of our hull, and chose the Southern entrance.

As recommended in our "pilot" book of the region, we first anchored on the Southern part, and using "La ptite grosse", our dinghy, went to check if the sandbanks were where they were supposed to be according to the charts. For the most critical part, they were, and after having waited for the tide to rise slightly, we entered the estuary. Centerboard up, rudder up and our reserves of rhum thrown overboard (not).

We anchored near the Southern shore, the portuguese one.

As we like to follow the rules - that's our Norwegian side - our courtesy flag (the Portuguese flag) was flown below the starboard spreaders, and the Q flag, the yellow one meaning "we enter the country and haven't met the authorities yet" was flown below the port spreaders.
 But I need to mention - and that's our French side - that :
- the courtesy flag consisted in a flag made of paper (bought in a dubious Chinese shop in Viveiro), protected from the rain by a zipper plastic bag.
- the yellow flag was maid of a recut T-shirt we bought in a second hand shop on Islay in Scotland.
Real flags are overpriced!!

As soon as we anchored, two very sympatic (and I mean it) representants of the Maritime Police came onboard, and together we filled in some forms that looked quite old (the field for the date was starting with 19__, and there was rust on the clips attaching the documents). Apparently non-EU leisure crafts do not come very often to this place. When we were finished with our two forms, in three exemplaries (cheers to the guy who invented carbon paper), we asked if we could now put down our Q flag, the yellow one... The first policeman looked at me, then at the flag. then at me again, then at the flag. Silence on the boat. "What does the yellow flag mean?". Bref, we put down the flag :-)

After the visit of an angry old fisherman who wanted us to moor on one of "his" buoys (which would cost only 5€/day!) instead of using our trusted anchor (which is already paid), we spent a good night in this very sheltered area.

Today we visited the town of Caminha. A very charming town, especially the main square on which we spent some hours drinking coffee and reading "Le Monde" and "Elle" in French! Tomorrow is logistics day: gas bottles, fresh food, maintenance and repairs. Then we will probably try to see the upstream side of the river using La Ptite Grosse, and set the course to Porto on Friday.

Estuary of the Minho.