PORTLAND MARINA 50’34”21N 002’27”05W
Out on a limb at the end of the restless miles of Chesil Beach lies the Isle of Portland, jutting into the tidal streams of the English Channel. It’s not a real island, of course, being tied to the Dorset coast, but it is a dramatic windswept place of tremendous beauty.
The marina lies in the lee of Chesil Beach, on the northeast side of Portland, where it is protected from the prevailing southwesterlies, and from unseasonal easterly weather by the mighty stone breakwater of Portland Harbour. The world’s largest manmade harbour on its completion in 1872, it had been an important naval station since the days of Henry VIII, and grew as a counterweight to Cherbourg across the Channel.
