PEOPLE Hank & Carina

THEN OLHÃO FOUND US...

... and we weren't even looking! Hank and Carina's story of how they came to love and live in Olhão

Welcome to our monthly column celebrating Olhão. After exploring Portugal top to bottom from Braga to Tavira enjoying so many coastal and inland locations in our RV, we decided Olhão was the place to buy our home to celebrate our “golden years”. Olhão was not on our radar at first. In fact, the discovery of Eastern Algarve was a pleasant surprise with the scale of development so much less than areas to the west. A chance winter rental introduced us to Olhão, a place we quickly found attractive for many reasons. “Walkability” is, above all, a main highlight and each month we will introduce you to places only steps away from our front door. Questions, Comments or Suggestions for new columns? Email us at hankryan2003@yahoo.com. We hope you will enjoy our column!

Low Tide High Tide

We love living near the water. More specifically, we cherish living near THIS water here in the eastern Algarve. While others might long to be further west where the waves of the Atlantic crash onto the sand, we can’t get enough of the placid Ria Formosa Natural Park here in Olhão. We enjoy viewing the silent transitions every six hours from low tide to high tide. At low tide, small boats rest on the sand near the shore while a small army of clam diggers appears every cycle without fail. High tide means boats of all sizes are back traveling within the Ria Formosa lagoon and it’s system of barrier islands that communicates with the sea through six inlets. While paddling a kayak offers the opportunity to experience enjoying these waters near the shore, venturing further requires choosing a boat of some sort. Wanting to be “eco-friendly”, we realized that is too often an overused marketing term where protecting the ecosystem is secondary to attracting passengers with good intentions. On a late 2020 visit to Tavira, we stumbled on a 12 person craft offered by SolarMoves which uses no fossil fuels, running on 100% solar energy. These boats run silently, gliding along the water getting up close to flamingos and other wildlife without disturbing their fragile habitats. No boat fuels enter the water, eliminating a major source of pollution impacting heavily on the marine environments destroying the very things we want to enjoy

while on the water. Thus, in a true sense, Solar Moves delivers an “eco-friendly” experience. At the time we had no idea where these remarkable boats were built. Fast forward to February 2021. Our love affair with this amazing place enjoying our part-time home here in Olhão was just beginning. Still curious where those remarkable SolarMoves tour boats came from, I give the Tavira company a call. To my surprise, they said origin was a company called Sun Concepts located right here in Olhão!

Sun Concepts

I Reached out to João Bastos, the General Manager at Sun Concepts (https:// sunconcept.pt/), here in Olhão to get more information. His welcoming response mentioned they had a boat located at the marina here in Olhão. Once I recognized it’s massive rooftop solar panels, I finally identified from the shore their 12 meter blue water capable catamaran. Then he asked if I might like to join him to see it! Wow! Sun Concepts has been producing 7 meter solar boats since 2015. The 2019 launch of their 12 meter catamarans attracted local and national leaders to help celebrate the opportunity these boats offer. In addition, Sun Concepts recently introduced a solar powered “work boat” design now operating out of Culatra, hopefully the subject of a future column. Carina and I decided to experience a ride on the 12 meter catamaran, launching out of Portimão. The Sun Boat (www.sunboat. pt), offers 3 hour journeys to the magnificent coastal caves here in the Algarve. While other fossil fuel powered sightseeing tours consume from 15 to 30 liters of fuel per hour, not to mention what amounts of diesel fuel escapes into the water, the Sun Boat glides cleanly and quietly through the waves dipping into the various caves, all with local nicknames noted by our congenial hosts, both named Helio! There is generally no lack of sunny weather here in the Algarve and our mid-October visit was no exception. While our tour was fully subscribed, there was always plenty of room to relax and occupy various places on the boat enjoying conversations with other passengers while working the phone cameras capturing shots to be viewed and shared later. If you and yours would like to spend time enjoying the Algarve waters either from Tavira in the Ria Formosa Natural Park or further west along the Algarve coast, consider joining a tour on one of these truly “eco-friendly” boats. This column is offered to give both thanks and appreciation for the opportunity to witness how one Olhão company is making a real difference towards a solution that can help address climate change.

Fine Print – We choose to focus on businesses here in Olhão where we have actually been customers first. Any future advertising from these businesses that supports Eastern Algarve Magazine is purely coincidental :-) *** If you know where we can find the most special decorative door fronts in Olhão, please write, or better yet, send a photo! Thanks!