The Google tells me that "Rabo de Peixe" is Portuguese for tail of the fish. We spent a beautiful sunny afternoon in the commercial harbour there, sketching. And here's my tale.
Rabo de Peixe is a large, sheltered harbour with massive tall breakwaters and two stationary cranes for lifting the catch out of the returning long-liners. Most of the fishing vessels are lifted out by a huge travelift (pretty much centre of the panorama) and placed out on the hard. Several were pulled in that manner, over the couple of hours that I made this sketch. Some of the men came over and looked over my shoulder as well as a couple of boys, who, I'm thinking, can't wait to go out on the water and fish one day with the men.
I have had a nice little 6" x 6" pad of Canal cotton fibre water colour paper for some time and have only used it a few times. That day, I started on the left and added sheet by sheet until I had used 6 sheets and covered about 270º.
Aside from the pleasure of watching the workings of the harbour and getting lost in the flow of drawing, I came away thinking I'd like to re-do this at and larger size and use more of this fabulous Canal paper. I just bought a 12" x 25' roll and plan to copy the drawing to be 6' long. And also, some weekend, take a run to Montreal and visit St. Armand Papetiers.
here are a couple of larger views of the expensive houses on the left looking out onto the Atlantic Ocean (above) and the fisherman's houses turning their backs to the harbour (below)
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