Date: 23. October 2021
Authors: Maxim, Knut
Position: portuguese coast, Lisbon
Geographical Position: 38°42.085‘N, 009°09.620‘ W
Etmal: 52NM (In total: 1731 NM)

We drove into the river Tejo by Lisbon at sunrise.

The view onto the city in the morning light was truly beautiful. On our way we already saw the beautiful beaches and a lot of sights that Lisbon is known for, for example the Torre de Belém, a UNESCO cultural heritage monastery, and a monument for Henry the navigator.

It looked very pretty and almost made the lookouts forget to watch out for all the small ships who steered right towards us because they wanted to look at us.

Even the pilot who had boarded our ship for navigation said that they were crazy to come so close in a busy channel like this. But thanks to Viktor and his focussed helming and Ben‘s navigation orders we got into the port safely.

When we arrived at our harbourplace after passing the big bridge, which was designed by the same architect as the Golden Gate Bridge, we saw that our neighbour at the jetty was the ca. 60 meter (and with that a tiny bit bigger than the Pelican) clipper ship „Stad Amsterdam“.

This ship also has three masts, but they are way higher than ours and there are many more sails. It looks very beautiful, but does make us feel a bit small (:

Before we could go ashore, Simon forced us to do the Happy Hour, also called clean ship. After the ship was tidy, we should have been allowed to go ashore, but first we had to solve the „gangway problem“. The problem was that our gangway seemed to be too short. We tried another gangway from the harbour, but it just didn‘t fit.

In the end, we managed to use our own gangway after we attached it to some lines. The trick is that it would lift up if the ship moves too far away from the pier instead of falling down – improvised, but it works!

Then we finally got our shoreleave.

Kristina took all of us as a big group to an old factory area which is nowadays a quarter called LXFactory with many possibilities to eat, drink and shop something nice and portuguese.

A lot of us went from one food place to another because there were so many options. In the other shops we could get small souvenirs, books, postcards and other little things to remember our trip.

After that, we could move freely around the city until 5 pm, but most of us stayed in the area because the old town was to far away and it was quite nice there. We enjoyed our first day in the portoguese capital with really nice and shiny weather with about 25 degrees.

To get back onto the vessel, we had to pass a safety check like on an airport. I almost lost my swiss army knive for another time to one of those checks (Knut).

Then we had a nice evening with a sunset over the bridge.