Foreigners in Portugal
My Neighbour’s Problems Made Me Laugh Out Loud
Relief! It’s not because I’m a foreign female. It’s something else.
Rui was at it again, rod in hand, twitching. Not only is he the worst fisherman I know — two sorry specimens in six weeks — but hilariously Portuguese in this dedication to living up to national stereotype. So I dinghied over, just to tease him, hanging off his skiff, chatting against the flood tide.
Many cruising boats have davits like mine. An upright pair of stainless tubes extend over the transom to hoist weight, like water jugs; but primarily to hold a dinghy up out of the water, especially at sea. They’re common enough and fairly easy to source and install.
Except in Portugal.
Sourcing services Portugal style
Rui had done the usual rounds to find some: shipyards wanted an exorbitant amount; online efforts confounded by this country’s bewildering import duties, forms and costs. That cheered me right up.
When I blunder into such projects, it’s with deadening premonition of defeat. After five years, I’m no closer to understanding what makes such tasks so very difficult to achieve. I blame my language deficiency, as another telecoms ‘English helpline’ hangs up the phone. Midcall.
I suggested the industrial estate at Olhão and told him exactly where to go — the acclaimed workshop where I’d wasted hours, weeks, months, trudging back and forth in my hopeless quest for a boarding ladder. I eventually concluded that being lost at sea, unable to board the boat, even that sailor’s worst nightmare was better than this ritualistic humiliation.
Why do they ignore us?
Rui drooped. He’d spent the last six weeks going ashore to the workshop, with his fisherman’s hope that One Day his efforts would be rewarded… come back later, call us, send a WhatsApp. Or, God forbid, write it in an email. The bells of doom. You know then that this will never, ever happen.
But Rui is Portuguese! Surely life is smoothed by language and his radiant charm. ‘No,’ he says, ‘That makes it worse.’
My smile brightened at a problem shared. Better yet, after all those years of sad rejection, can I now start to believe that they don’t hate me for being foreign, or worse, a woman?
‘No’, he says. ‘It’s not that.’
Ohhh. Now I get it. I’ve been studying their culture. I’m enlightened.
‘It’s because we’re outsiders! We’re not in their Cunha network — no favours to trade.’
‘It’s this.’ He sweeps his hands down, self-indicating. I’m gobsmacked. They’re jealous because he’s young and gorgeous with a blinding smile?
‘They look at me and see I’m not rich. They want easy jobs with big money. It’s simple.’
Now I’m depressed. Every time I go ashore, I dress up in my cleanest, most Respectable Middle Aged Lady outfits. And they see right through it.
Hmm. I relate the online exchange I’m having with a Portuguese woman, who’s stranded in a Portimão shipyard with a knackered engine. A mechanic came to look, told her to get a new one, and walked away.
Sailors’ response
Collectively we sailors hold enormous resources of desenrasco engineering know-how, hard-fought experience and moldering supplies of Some Day spares.
Back onboard, I got to work in the time-honoured tradition: calling across my Iberian networks to sailors who might have davits; who’d go to find this distraught woman, take apart her filthy, rusty boat engine and do their best. It’s what we do.
Alone at sea, against incalculable forces of Nature, we live or die by our own skills, preparedness, incredible good luck (or not) and bloody-minded persistence.
And we have each other.
The push and pull of Wild Nature and misfit community is why we do what we do. Sure, the lure of foreign shores draws us from one harbour to the next, but you could do that flying or driving. That’s just traveling.
But to test your worth, knowing that your meagre human strength is always the weakest link in the chain.
That’s sailing.
