The statement came following reports that the Thomson Spirit had been unable to move for over an hour due to silting on the riverbed, resulting in docking being delayed.

The port authority stressed that at no time was the huge vessel “stuck”, nor were there any “abnormalities” with the ship’s entry or exit to the port, in effect rendering the news “unfounded.”
It shot down reports the berthing was “allegedly aborted due to a lack of dredging” in the river.
“The entry manoeuvre was absolutely normal, without incident and within the prescribed time”, the port authority emphasised, adding that the duration of the stay in the port was “as expected for cruisers to enjoy Portimão city and various points of interest in the Algarve on planned excursions.”
Thomson cruises added:”Due to strong river currents, the Captain made the decision to change how he was berthing the vessel and was turning [the ship] around.”
It was the Thomson Spirit’s eighth stop in Portimão Port of 2016, “always without any type of incident to register”, the port authority highlighted.
It stressed that, on previous stops in the city, the ship has always docked at around 9am and left at around 5pm, “with this eighth docking keeping roughly within the same time frame.”
Last Wednesday, national newspaper Correio da Manhã (CM) ran a report under the headline “Ship aborts manoeuvre due to lack of dredging”, which stated that the 33,000+ ton cruise ship had arrived in Portimão port on Tuesday morning, and spent around an hour attempting to dock due to being hampered by earthy clogging on the riverbed.
Problems concerning silting in the Arade River are, CM elaborated, “well-known to the Algarve and Sines Port Administration”, and, the report claimed, “proper dredging of the riverbed has not been carried out for almost a decade.”