Midnight Sun III Story - Bay of Biscay to Porto We purchased a new Lagoon 40 Catamaran in La Rochelle France and brought her back to the USA. We have chronicled our trip in this series of videos.

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well after almost a month stay in La

Rochelle we were aged to get underway

here's a quick recap of the first leg

our roots which was across the Bay of

Biscay so we picked up the boat in La

Rochelle France here's an overview of

the marina taken from Google Earth and

I'm gonna give you a quick overview of

our routes first of all we had to cross

the Bay of Biscay and we had a general

idea to head towards Keshawn or a Karuna

we actually pulled into Rubidoux Spain

and that was about 300 miles pulling

into the Rio River do cute little town

of Riverdale where we stayed a couple of

nights before we moved on to a coruña

in northern Spain we cut straight across

the bay minimizing our distance across

the Bay of Biscay

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here we are leaving La Rochelle before

we got underway we wasted code zero

sailing made by Shore sails Pensacola

way to be a wonderful service and here's

a just a quick aerial view at the marina

which was quite a sight we estimated

there are about 5,000 boats in this

marina and I understand it's probably

the largest marina in Europe

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we finally we get underway

it's hard to get a perspective on what

the wave heights are but today we've

seen

may 15 2015 12 - he like

the wall won't climb love it

folks doing really well thankfully

but if you

yes

11:01 point

also you have a camp

oh yeah they'll escape

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after a couple of days of see ghosts

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and of course a visit by our friends the

dolphins

welcome

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here we are

manfist game sunrise over Norman Spain

John

in life

Mountains starting to light up in the

Sun

today

having Korea

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although the sea doesn't seem that rough

in the video we actually had 15 to 20

foot waves on overnights it was pretty

stormy and choppy here we are going into

the bridge and up the river

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still cold in December we hadn't reached

the warm weather yet but we really

enjoyed ourselves mr. Gupta

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everyone says the food is good in France

but we actually prefer the food in Spain

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after a couple nights ago today it was

finally time for us to move on to a

coruña Spain this was to get us round

the final corner of the Bay of Biscay

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Karuna is quite an industrial port but a

beautiful town a lot larger town that we

had really anticipated and we against

data several days here restocking

getting our breath before we went around

Finisterre

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we visited the king of ham got some

vacuum-pack meats for our trip in case

of emergency

Finisterre was perhaps the most daunting

piece of the trip in my mind and

certainly the point of the trip that I

had the most anxiety about

we've been watching the weather waiting

for a good weather window the winds have

been relentless from the south leading

to really bad conditions and relief in

staff and finally we saw a window that

we thought was a good time to me

there was not ideal conditions without

this time of year

I think condition is a very yet several

other folks decided to leave at the same

time as ice

we quickly lost sight of the mall

Finisterre is a daunting place the

Romans believed it was the end of the

world and I think they had pretty good

reasons his view of Cobo finished there

in the daylight we actually rounded

Finisterre after nightfall maybe was a

good thing we couldn't see anything

we stayed well offshore to avoid any

currents rocks accepted associate we

finished there to give ourselves plenty

of margin for error that night routing

Finisterre was maps from the saddest

nights of the trip as nightfall came we

started to hear emergency calls from a

hundred-foot long fishing vessel

first one person was over for word they

are obviously looking for him and the

fear seized then came another clause ii

man overboard then the Spanish Coast

Guard stepped in and started requesting

that Mariners keep a sharp lookout of

course we did but in those conditions we

couldn't see more than 50 feet from the

boats the Spanish coast guard

that's a rescue effort they launched a

300 foot long search and rescue boat and

a fleet of helicopters to spend the

entire night searching the area we kept

hearing the calls from the Coast Guard

but to the best of my knowledge Noah was

recovered it was a very harrowing night

the next morning we decided to come and

support at Vienna the Costello

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the ennahdha Costello is a beautiful

town it was approaching Christmastime in

fact this is one of those towns that you

just stumble across as a cruiser and

can't believe how fortunate you've been

the architecture and artwork was

exquisite as it was nearing Christmas

time Christmas music was being piped

through the streets

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you've heard of the red carpet treatment

while the streets of Vienna will

literally carpeted with red carpet the

Christmas time it truly was exquisite

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like am i otherwise no it was Viana do

Castelo

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we had a great meal at the three pots

fondue restaurant getting one of our

better meals on the trip we tied up on

the visits of stock because the marina

entrance was too narrow for us to get

into we only stayed the night rates and

move on our original thoughts were the

head supporter but the weather was once

again atrocious so we cut the trip short

and pulled in to have our divisor at

least I think that's how you pronounce

it of oil was similar talented viana not

quite as pretty but still had a

wonderful character of its own we would

have stayed longer but the marina had no

gas or diesel

it was approaching Christmas time so we

thought we'd better make tracks and get

on towards Porto

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well here we are motoring on our way to

Porto to select a lower part de bazan

nice little town really friendly marina

except they had no diesel had no fuel of

any type of Amazings as part of it was a

fishing port

we got about a half tank left on each

one

oh we figured with Christmas coming up

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so probably about a 3-hour motor video

so you can move

big Lola's

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we arrived in Porto ready to spend the

Christmas holidays at the marina known

as marina duro located just inside the

mouth of the Douro River Christmas is a

great time we had the pleasure of being

with our friends sorry and Tracy

I'm so construction of the old tradition

my boat's just down the road in Gaia and

we took a walk around the the Ducks were

the River Cruises go from they take

river cruises up the Douro River where

the where the grapes are grown for port

we stumbled upon a motorcycle rally and

we took the opportunity to visit several

port caves and really enjoyed our time

we learnt a lot about the process of

making port aging in oak cask and

enjoyed a number of very fine samples

there are some very familiar names such

as Sandeman craft and we learnt a lot

about the history of the port industry

in Porto of course we sampled several

glasses my personal favorite being the

white port and we took the opportunity

to put the name on Midnight Sun 3

something we've meant to do for some

time including a hailing port of Pirates

Cove Alabama we enjoyed a fine Christmas

dinner in the marina I'm amazed to find

a turkey even though that's not the

traditional Christmas dinner in Portugal

we learned a traditional Christmas

dinner is a salted codfish but we

elected to go with the traditional

turkey while we were in Porto we enjoyed

a wonderful walking tour and discover

that the town is extremely hilly we

visited some spectacular bridges

Road station which had a wonderful art

collection and the cathedral upon the

air

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we really enjoyed the city of Porto

definitely a place I'd like to go back

to spend more time

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the river cruises seem like a wonderful

thing to do unfortunately we couldn't

get under all the bridges or we run

further out we took the funicular back

down to the river crossed over the

bridge

rich ruler :

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then we took the gun blood back down

into the old town of gaya

just in time for a visit to Churchill's

port cakes here we see some of the

traditional boats that we used to bring

the the wine down the river to make them

support

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we really enjoyed our time in Porto and

it's certainly a place I'd love to go

back and visit and perhaps take the

other crews up into the wine country

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