Not so Sunny Spain!!!

We left you all last time when we were weather bound in Lastres waiting for the wind to blow from the “normal” direction for this time of year, eventually it decide to blow from the NE and we set off to get around the top corner of Spain and into the Rias.  WiFi is still not brilliant so only a few piccies this time.

From Lastres we made a 45nm hop to Puerto de San Esteban, an old coaling harbour with a shallow entrance bar into a long channel with a sheltered harbour wall to tie alongside.  The wind was very light so although it did blow from the right direction there was not enough to sail so engines on all day with a bit of motorsailing just for a change.  We got to the entrance bar just before high tide so there was plenty of water but a fairly big swell to contend with as we negotiated the tricky entrance into the channel – keep as close to the wall as you dare!!!  Found a space alongside the wall even though a local marinero wanted to put us on a pontoon that was only big enough for a dinghy – some appropriate hand signals convinced him that we would rather tie up to the wall.  At least the sun was shining and we had a very warm evening in the cockpit with a little beer – only one cos it was an early start next day – how unusual!!

Away from Puerto de San Esteban at first light, a quite reasonable 0700hrs over here, to give us a chance to make some decent progress, unfortunately that meant crossing the harbour bar a couple of hours before low water with 2m less water than we came in with.  Fortunately the wind was very light and the waves and swell had eased somewhat but it was still pretty bumpy for the last 1/4 mile of the channel with the depth sounder reading less than 0.5m underneath us in a couple of places – definitely not a harbour entrance to try in any dodgy conditions.

After an hour the wind had settled at 14-16knts from ENE and we scooted along at around 9knts with both headsails poled out, the sea was still a bit confused but it was OK for us going west, I wouldn’t have wanted to go the other way.  We had not really made our minds up where to stop for the night when we left but after deciding the wind was good and Nimrod was flying along happily we would head for Ria Cedeira, 95nm away so it was a long day, we covered the distance in exactly 12hrs from anchor to anchor so that was a very good days sailing!!  Everything was great until we got to Cabo Ortegal and turned SW to Cedeira, the wind picked up rapidly as it accelerated around the headland and we had 30knts gusting to 40 while we frantically rolled up some sail to get the boat speed back into single figures!!!  This lasted for a couple of hours until we got into Ria Cedeira and then someone turned the fan off and it was back to a gentle 10knts as we anchored in the well sheltered, pretty anchorage at Cedeira.  It was also a change to see lots of other anchored boats, with UK, French, German, Dutch and USA ensigns all on display, so far in Spain we seemed to have been almost the only boat out there.  Unfortunately no time for socialising as the wind was forecast to be perfect again the next day.

From Cedeira we headed to the famous headland of Cape Finisterre (the end of the world – Finis Terre – as far as the Romans knew) and into the Ria de Finisterre to anchor just north of the harbour itself.  The wind started quite light and we really needed the spinnaker up to make decent progress, however the forecast was for the wind to pick up through the day so we thought it best to stay with the mainsail and gennaker rather than battle getting the spinnaker down in a rising wind.  The wind never did seem to pick up and eventually we decided the spinnaker had to go up and we gained a bit of speed to 8knts with a good number of other boats all heading the same way.  All was going great until the last 10nm when the wind did pick up with a vengance and we had to get the spinnaker down as it gusted to 30knts with no warning at all, at least the sea state was not too bad and we managed OK with no dramas and headed to the landmark of Cape Finisterre.  It had been another long day with 85nm covered in just over 12hrs.

Just as we were rounding the Cape to head into the Ria we heard a Mayday from a single handed French sailor some 60nm South of us, he was taking on water, he reckoned about 20% full and he was sinking.  Fortunately he was just South of the major shipping lanes and a couple of large cargo boats headed to his position and were with him about an hour or so later.  From what we could hear on the VHF one of the rescue ships had a man overboard as they tried to rescue the Frenchman so further complicating the problems.  The weather and sea state out there meant it was too dangerous to manoeuvre a large ship alongside a very small yacht (27ft), and the Frenchman was very emotional as he did not want to leave his boat - “she is my friend” he said on the VHF.  Eventually the Portuguese rescue helicopter arrived to airlift him off and everybody was finally safe – it was quite harrowing listening to all this going on, not really knowing how bad conditions were out there, and hoping everyone was safe in the end.

Cape Finisterre on a Good Day

Next day we left Finisterre in flat calm conditions to go to Ria De Arosa, only 40nm to do so an easy day for a change – good job really cos the wind never really appeared and we manage only an hours sailing in the whole trip, but it was very sunny and very hot.  We met up with Nick, Lisa, Ella and Alfie on Imagine in a little anchorage on the south side of the Ria and spent the next few days with them visiting various places and slowly moving south to Ria de Pontivedra and finally Ria de Vigo.

We sampled some of the mussels that are farmed in huge quantities on floating platforms in all the western Rias, fresh out of the sea with wine, cream and garlic, absolutely lovely!!!  Villagarcia was one stop that is not easily forgotten, it was their “water fiesta” and it was absolute madness with an open air disco/rave that went on all night and thousands of drunk and drugged teenagers on the streets (we must be getting old!!!)  We soon departed for quieter places.

Fresh Moules Marinere in Ria De Arosa

Imagine headed south and we met up with Mike, Jane, Glyn and Linda from Oswestry, they were holidaying near Pontevedra so we had a great evening with them in Combarro at a Festival of the Sea, trying lots of local seafood specialities.  We met up with Imagine again a few days later to spend a couple more days with them before they went back home to work and school.

As you can guess from the title the weather has not been too brilliant over the last few weeks with a lot of cloudy days mixed in with the sunshine but at least it is always warm enough for shorts and tee-shirts.  When we do have sunshine it lasts for 3 or 4 days before turning cloudy again – seems like summer has not really happened anywhere this year!!!

Rural Spain, Top of Ria De Vigo

We are now in Baiona, at the SW end of Ria de Vigo sitting on board in wet, windy and grey conditions waiting for the weather to improve and for the wind to change from the South to the North so we can start making some progress down the Portuguese coast to the Algarve.  Not too many places to stop on this next stretch of coast so we will have some longish days to cover the distance between decent anchorages.

Hi all Sue here

Well after some very long days sailing and sometimes very bumpy sailing we finally met up with our friends on Imagine. The following few days were very enjoyable with them, lots of eating, drinking and sitting on various beaches. Chris and Nick were like two little boys out collecting mussels in the dinghy. One day they caught a cuttle fish and Nick tried stroking it to show Alfie how it changed colour but when Chris tipped it back into the sea it squirted him with blue ink all over his face, it obviously didn’t like being stroked. I didn’t laugh much!! On one of our grey days I actually managed to watch Lord of the Rings with Lisa, Ella and Alfie, just need to watch part 3 now.

We were all sitting on Imagine one evening in Aldan when lot’s of Dolphins swam in and started circling all around the anchorage rounding fish up. They ended up nearly on the beach when they finally finished, it was amazing to watch them so close up. It seems a very popular place for Dolphins around the Rias and we seem to see them most days.

Everywhere we go around the various Rias there seems to be a Fiesta of some sort on so we have ended up in some very noisy anchorages. They seem to celebrate anything and everything out here from saints to water and always accompanied with very loud music and fireworks that go on all night!!

We are now waiting to head for Lisbon where we are hoping to meet up with some more friends, Alan and Yvonne. Then we will continue on down to the Algarve where we are meeting up with our friends John, Susan and Ian and their kids, It’s a very hard life this boating!!

Au Revoir to France & Hola to Spain

Finally found a better WiFi connection so I have posted the last blog again complete with photos. New blog to follow in the next day or so.

Hello again to everybody, sorry you haven’t heard from us for a while but WiFi access has been very hard to come by on our travels through France and the few times we have managed to find it the connection has not been really good enough for uploading the blog and pictures.  Now got a reasonable quality WiFi signal in Spain so time to tell you all what we have been up to – even so the connection is so slow that I have had to split the post into 4 to send it, hope you can make sense of it!!!!

Port Launay on the River Aulne	Railway Bridge before the Lock

We spent a week up the peace and quite of the River Aulne at Port Launay mixing with some of the local characters who live on board their boats in the Canal.  The weather out at sea was pretty mixed and winds from the wrong direction so we were happy to be safely tied up to the canal bank.  We had a huge hypermarket a mile up the canal at Chateaulin selling some very drinkable Chardonnay at 8 euros for a 3ltr box – Sue was very happy!!!  We did manage to stock the boat up with food as well as drink while we there.  We also met up with a Scottish couple tied a couple of boats up from us and found that they had been stuck in Holyhead in May the very same time we were there – very strange!!

Ships Graveyard at the River Mouth	Calm Anchorage in Ile de Glenans

Finally the weather seemed to be relenting and we decided to head back to the sea to meet Pru and Mike at Camaret.  The picture above shows a collection of French Naval ships tied up and left to rot at the bottom of the river just before it enters the Rade de Brest – quite a sad sight to see over a dozen ships in such a state.

From Camaret we had to make a bit of progress to meet Caroline and Rich in the Gulf of Morbihan in just over a week so we did not really have too much time for sightseeing on this part of the trip.  We had been promised by Jean and John that as soon as we got south of Pointe de Penmarch that the weather would be warmer and it would be like entering another country with blue skies, sunshine and warm winds – we have to report that they were lying!!!  The weather continued to be mainly cloudy with temperatures hardly ever getting over 20 deg C even when the sun did bother to come out – global warming has definitely not happened this year!!!

We stopped at Anse de Loch, just South of the Raz de Sein, Benodet and the Ile de Glenans on our way South.  The Glenans were lovely and we did have a couple of sunny days, we also had a visit from the French Customs while we were anchored there – they were very polite, recorded ship and passport details, and asked a few questions before leaving us.

From there we headed to Sauzon on Belle Ile for just one night and then into the Gulf of Morbihan as the weather had turned crappy again and the Gulf is a good place to hide.  Unfortunately almost all the little bays and sheltered anchorages around the Gulf are now packed full of moorings so finding somewhere to anchor was not as easy as we expected.  Luckily the places we did find were very pleasant and peaceful.  Richard and Caroline joined us for a week and we had a really great time despite the weather being a bit indifferent – but I will let Sue tell you about all that.

Remote Beach in Gulf of Morbihan	Sunny Evening with Rich and Caroline

After saying goodbye to Rich and Caroline it was time to make some more progress south before crossing the bottom corner of Biscay to Spain and onwards West to meet Nick, Lisa, Ella and Alfie on Imagine in the Rias.

The weather was a bit warmer and the sun shone a bit more often but the wind never seemed to get above 10knts so we had a lot of practice at trying to sail well in the light winds.  We found that we could make 4 or 5 knts under sail with 8 – 10 knts of wind on the beam, not too bad really considering we are very heavily loaded with fuel, water, supplies, Sue’s shoes and everything else that goes with living aboard.  The few times the wind got to 12 knts we could manage 6.5 to 7knts that felt like we were flying after so many miles of sedate progress.

We stopped off at Noirmoutier, Les Sable D L’onnes, and La Rochelle as we headed south, the beaches at Les Sable were absolutely packed with people so we were glad to stay on board and watch.

Bonito Caught on our Biscay Crossing	Sunset over Biscay

We had planned to make a couple more hops south from La Rochelle before crossing to Spain but as we headed out from the anchorage the forecast was giving 10 – 15 knt NE winds for the next 24 hrs so we decided to head straight for Santona, near Santander.  The trip was just a shade under 200 miles and started with no wind at all so we motored for nearly 8hrs in blazing sun and flat calm seas, we managed to catch one Bonito that was big enough for dinner and enough for another meal. 

The wind did eventually appear and we had both headsails poled out making nearly 7knts for about 8hrs, I left Sue on watch at 2 in the morning with a nice steady wind, no ships on the radar and nothing untoward expected until she woke me at 03:30 to tell me there was lightning all around the boat and the wind had died to nearly nothing!!!  We furled the sails and then motored through a nasty thunderstorm with lightning all around and torrential rain for nearly an hour – not much fun when you are about 100 miles from anything!!!

The rest of the trip was very frustrating as the wind veered completely around the compass twice in the next 5hrs, no sooner had we got the sails set it was time to change them or furl them or motor or motorsail or put the sails back up again – a real pain in the a***!!!  Finally the wind did settle down and decided it wanted to come from the SW, almost exactly where we wanted to go – what a surprise!!  It did veer a bit towards the W and we managed to motorsail and sail the last 40 miles hard on the wind, even having to reef down for the last hour as the wind built over 20knts.  We were very glad to drop anchor in Santona, but very pleased to have made it across Biscay without any major problems.

Headland off Santona	Fishing Village of Lastres

Surprisingly the weather on this coast of Spain has not been told that it is summer and it is just as mixed up as it was in France.  We had a nearly calm day on Thursday as we headed to Llanes and then had a seriously bumpy day on Friday as we cut short our planned day and headed to the little fishing village of Lastres where we are safely tied to the harbour wall with a couple of French boats rafted outside us.  The French boats had had a really bad day with one boat getting fishing net around his prop twice and having to dive off the boat in pretty horrible seas to cut it free, the other boat had ripped the clew of is headsail, blown out his spinnaker and also smashed his outboard engine off the guardrail as he tried to help remove the net from the other boats props.  They were very glad, particularly the women, to be safely tied to us in a calm harbour!!!

The weather has pinned us down here as we now have SW F5-7 winds forecast for Sat and Sun with a rough sea to go with it – at the moment the forecast looks like NE winds from Tuesday onwards so we hope to be able to make some decent miles towards the NW corner of Spain to meet Imagine and crew.

Hola Amigos Sue here

Despite being disappointed with the French weather we are still enjoying our travels and having lots of experiences!! Meeting the locals in Port Launay was one, we were the only English couple invited on board their boats for a drink!! The scottish people we met thought they were the local druggies, I’m sure they weren’t but they did like a drink or two!!

When we had a visit from the customs I was just finishing giving Chris a haircut and had just set the trimmer to shave to do his neck. I hastily swept up the hair cuttings so they could come into the cockpit. I thought we handled their visit very well and didn’t get flustered. When they left I told Chris I just needed to take a bit more hair off the sides but forgot I had set the trimmer to shave!! Chris was left with a stripe across the side of his head, he wasn’t very happy but did eventually see the funny side (no pun intended!!). It’s growing back now and I’m sure after his next trim you won’t notice it. I was obviously more flustered than I thought!!

We had a great week with Caroline and Rich and as usual got plenty of walks (hikes to Caroline and me!) in. We saw a Jazz Concert advertised on one of these walks and decided that it wouldn’t be too far to walk to that evening. It turned out to be about 3 miles each way and it was a very local event in a field!! Wine was only 1 euro a plastic cup full but you wouldn’t want to drink a lot of it. Highlight of the night was Chris trying out his french and greeting someone Bon Suit a mix of Bon Nuit and Bon Soir!! It wasn’t that funny but we laughed all the way back to the boat, perhaps the wine had something to do with it!!

Richard and Chris thought it was very amusing the way Caroline and I reacted to wasps, flapping around when one came near us. That was until one day whilst drinking bottles of beer on the boat Richard suddenly spat his beer out and started shouting. A wasp had crawled inside his bottle unseen and then stung him on the tongue. We were very sympathetic as you can imagine!! The next day Richard had to join a conference call from work and if his work colleagues could have seen him sitting there with a blue rubber oven glove on swatting wasps as he took it I’m sure they would have been very amused!!

I was dreading crossing Biscay as I had heard so many stories about it. Like Chris said the first half of the crossing were fine. Trust it all to go wrong on my watch!! It was really weird the way the wind just died to nothing and the lightning that had been on the horizon and Chris had told me not to worry about as it was miles away was suddenly all around. I didn’t really want to wake Chris but it did feel like the calm before the storm and I was right. We had only just managed to get the sails down when it hit us. It was very impressive but not when you are sitting on a boat in the middle of it!! When Chris put the laptop in the oven to protect it in case we got hit by lightning I did get a bit worried!! Like I’ve said before its like childbirth and all forgotten now!!

We are still having mixed weather in Spain but hopefully it will sort itself out soon. I thought I’d escaped the Irish Sea conditions but the sea out here can definitely match it. Now looking forward to joining up with our friends on Imagine in the next few days.

Au Revoir to France – Hola to Spain

Hello again to everybody, sorry you haven’t heard from us for a while but WiFi access has been very hard to come by on our travels through France and the few times we have managed to find it the connection has not been really good enough for uploading the blog and pictures.  Now got a reasonable quality WiFi signal in Spain so time to tell you all what we have been up to – even so the connection is so slow that I have had to just post text to be able to send it, hope you can make sense of it!!!!  Will try and post the photos soon!!!

We spent a week up the peace and quite of the River Aulne at Port Launay mixing with some of the local characters who live on board their boats in the Canal.  The weather out at sea was pretty mixed and winds from the wrong direction so we were happy to be safely tied up to the canal bank.  We had a huge hypermarket a mile up the canal at Chateaulin selling some very drinkable Chardonnay at 8 euros for a 3ltr box – Sue was very happy!!!  We did manage to stock the boat up with food as well as drink while we there.  We also met up with a Scottish couple tied a couple of boats up from us and found that they had been stuck in Holyhead in May the very same time we were there – very strange!!

Finally the weather seemed to be relenting and we decided to head back to the sea to meet Pru and Mike at Camaret.  The picture above shows a collection of French Naval ships tied up and left to rot at the bottom of the river just before it enters the Rade de Brest – quite a sad sight to see over a dozen ships in such a state.

From Camaret we had to make a bit of progress to meet Caroline and Rich in the Gulf of Morbihan in just over a week so we did not really have too much time for sightseeing on this part of the trip.  We had been promised by Jean and John that as soon as we got south of Pointe de Penmarch that the weather would be warmer and it would be like entering another country with blue skies, sunshine and warm winds – we have to report that they were lying!!!  The weather continued to be mainly cloudy with temperatures hardly ever getting over 20 deg C even when the sun did bother to come out – global warming has definitely not happened this year!!!

We stopped at Anse de Loch, just South of the Raz de Sein, Benodet and the Ile de Glenans on our way South.  The Glenans were lovely and we did have a couple of sunny days, we also had a visit from the French Customs while we were anchored there – they were very polite, recorded ship and passport details, and asked a few questions before leaving us.

From there we headed to Sauzon on Belle Ile for just one night and then into the Gulf of Morbihan as the weather had turned crappy again and the Gulf is a good place to hide.  Unfortunately almost all the little bays and sheltered anchorages around the Gulf are now packed full of moorings so finding somewhere to anchor was not as easy as we expected.  Luckily the places we did find were very pleasant and peaceful.  Richard and Caroline joined us for a week and we had a really great time despite the weather being a bit indifferent – but I will let Sue tell you about all that.

After saying goodbye to Rich and Caroline it was time to make some more progress south before crossing the bottom corner of Biscay to Spain and onwards West to meet Nick, Lisa, Ella and Alfie on Imagine in the Rias.

The weather was a bit warmer and the sun shone a bit more often but the wind never seemed to get above 10knts so we had a lot of practice at trying to sail well in the light winds.  We found that we could make 4 or 5 knts under sail with 8 – 10 knts of wind on the beam, not too bad really considering we are very heavily loaded with fuel, water, supplies, Sue’s shoes and everything else that goes with living aboard.  The few times the wind got to 12 knts we could manage 6.5 to 7knts that felt like we were flying after so many miles of sedate progress.

We stopped off at Noirmoutier, Les Sable D L’onnes, and La Rochelle as we headed south, the beaches at Les Sable were absolutely packed with people so we were glad to stay on board and watch.

We had planned to make a couple more hops south from La Rochelle before crossing to Spain but as we headed out from the anchorage the forecast was giving 10 – 15 knt NE winds for the next 24 hrs so we decided to head straight for Santona, near Santander.  The trip was just a shade under 200 miles and started with no wind at all so we motored for nearly 8hrs in blazing sun and flat calm seas, we managed to catch one Bonito that was big enough for dinner and enough for another meal. 

The wind did eventually appear and we had both headsails poled out making nearly 7knts for about 8hrs, I left Sue on watch at 2 in the morning with a nice steady wind, no ships on the radar and nothing untoward expected until she woke me at 03:30 to tell me there was lightning all around the boat and the wind had died to nearly nothing!!!  We furled the sails and then motored through a nasty thunderstorm with lightning all around and torrential rain for nearly an hour – not much fun when you are about 100 miles from anything!!!

The rest of the trip was very frustrating as the wind veered completely around the compass twice in the next 5hrs, no sooner had we got the sails set it was time to change them or furl them or motor or motorsail or put the sails back up again – a real pain in the a***!!!  Finally the wind did settle down and decided it wanted to come from the SW, almost exactly where we wanted to go – what a surprise!!  It did veer a bit towards the W and we managed to motorsail and sail the last 40 miles hard on the wind, even having to reef down for the last hour as the wind built over 20knts.  We were very glad to drop anchor in Santona, but very pleased to have made it across Biscay without any major problems.

Surprisingly the weather on this coast of Spain has not been told that it is summer and it is just as mixed up as it was in France.  We had a nearly calm day on Thursday as we headed to Llanes and then had a seriously bumpy day on Friday as we cut short our planned day and headed to the little fishing village of Lastres where we are safely tied to the harbour wall with a couple of French boats rafted outside us.  The French boats had had a really bad day with one boat getting fishing net around his prop twice and having to dive off the boat in pretty horrible seas to cut it free, the other boat had ripped the clew of is headsail, blown out his spinnaker and also smashed his outboard engine off the guardrail as he tried to help remove the net from the other boats props.  They were very glad, particularly the women, to be safely tied to us in a calm harbour!!!

The weather has pinned us down here as we now have SW F5-7 winds forecast for Sat and Sun with a rough sea to go with it – at the moment the forecast looks like NE winds from Tuesday onwards so we hope to be able to make some decent miles towards the NW corner of Spain to meet Imagine and crew.

Hola Amigos Sue here

Despite being disappointed with the French weather we are still enjoying our travels and having lots of experiences!! Meeting the locals in Port Launay was one, we were the only English couple invited on board their boats for a drink!! The scottish people we met thought they were the local druggies, I’m sure they weren’t but they did like a drink or two!!

When we had a visit from the customs I was just finishing giving Chris a haircut and had just set the trimmer to shave to do his neck. I hastily swept up the hair cuttings so they could come into the cockpit. I thought we handled their visit very well and didn’t get flustered. When they left I told Chris I just needed to take a bit more hair off the sides but forgot I had set the trimmer to shave!! Chris was left with a stripe across the side of his head, he wasn’t very happy but did eventually see the funny side (no pun intended!!). It’s growing back now and I’m sure after his next trim you won’t notice it. I was obviously more flustered than I thought!!

We had a great week with Caroline and Rich and as usual got plenty of walks (hikes to Caroline and me!) in. We saw a Jazz Concert advertised on one of these walks and decided that it wouldn’t be too far to walk to that evening. It turned out to be about 3 miles each way and it was a very local event in a field!! Wine was only 1 euro a plastic cup full but you wouldn’t want to drink a lot of it. Highlight of the night was Chris trying out his french and greeting someone Bon Suit a mix of Bon Nuit and Bon Soir!! It wasn’t that funny but we laughed all the way back to the boat, perhaps the wine had something to do with it!!

Richard and Chris thought it was very amusing the way Caroline and I reacted to wasps, flapping around when one came near us. That was until one day whilst drinking bottles of beer on the boat Richard suddenly spat his beer out and started shouting. A wasp had crawled inside his bottle unseen and then stung him on the tongue. We were very sympathetic as you can imagine!! The next day Richard had to join a conference call from work and if his work colleagues could have seen him sitting there with a blue rubber oven glove on swatting wasps as he took it I’m sure they would have been very amused!!

I was dreading crossing Biscay as I had heard so many stories about it. Like Chris said the first half of the crossing were fine. Trust it all to go wrong on my watch!! It was really weird the way the wind just died to nothing and the lightning that had been on the horizon and Chris had told me not to worry about as it was miles away was suddenly all around. I didn’t really want to wake Chris but it did feel like the calm before the storm and I was right. We had only just managed to get the sails down when it hit us. It was very impressive but not when you are sitting on a boat in the middle of it!! When Chris put the laptop in the oven to protect it in case we got hit by lightning I did get a bit worried!! Like I’ve said before its like childbirth and all forgotten now!!

We are still having mixed weather in Spain but hopefully it will sort itself out soon. I thought I’d escaped the Irish Sea conditions but the sea out here can definitely match it. Now looking forward to joining up with our friends on Imagine in the next few days.