A few days in Spain

Thursday 1st November

Peaceful, easy day. A relaxed morning. Coffee and porridge after rising at a very civilised 08:30. Louise and Susie took some clothes to the launderette. I quickly checked Wiki for things to do and see in La Coruna. The Torres de Hercules, a Roman lighthouse caught my eye.

I went up to see the marina manager, an amiable chap I have dubbed Manuel. I wanted to learn a bit of Spanish. I asked him for a map, which he supplied. There then followed 10 minutes of me trying to ask him what the Spanish word for map was. Eventually he got it and replied 'mapa' in a monotone voice. Deflated at such a meagre return for so much effort, I left.

Around 14:00, John, Susie, Ross, Louise and myself jumped into a taxi, paid 5 euros and took a trip to the lighthouse.

I loved it. Julius Caeser visited the area in AD 31 and it was amazing to think that Roman galleys may have sailed the same waters we sailed over yesterday. Just inside, you could see the ancient footings, including 2000 year old concrete.

The tower itself was refaced with granite in 1788, but inside, all the stonework was Roman. Ross, Louise and I climbed to the top and stared out over the now raging sea. A thoroughly enjoyable visit. The five of us then walked back to the boat via a supermarket. Louise and I had fresh crusty bread, allioli (Spanish garlic mayonnaise), roasted peppers in olive oil and fresh tomatoes. A lovely afternoon.

Darsena de la marina is fine. 32 euros a night for a 12m boat. Clean toilets and nice showers, friendly staff, a bar with reasonable prices and less than 5 minutes to walk to the centre of town.

Friday 2nd November.
Oceana arrived during the night; our second meeting. She towered above us. Her hordes filed off, wandered around for a bit and then filed back on again. Not my idea of travel at all. The folk aboard had just 6 hours ashore in total, hardly enough to get more than a tiny taste of the place.

Louise, Ross and myself took a walk around town later, and had fresh bread, olives etc. for lunch.

Then we readied the boat for a possible early departure tomorrow, checking the engine, filling water and so on. Cascais is a possible next stop, approximately 320 nm, just over 2 days away.

One thing that struck me more than anything about La Corunna was the feel of the place. Even at 10pm on a Friday night, whole families filled the squares, eating, drinking, the kids playing in the streets. No gangs of drunken youths and no threatening feeling that one might encounter in any British town on a Friday night. It was really happy, laid back, just nice.

First few days

547 miles


Saturday
We finally left Neyland at 10:21 on Saturday. All of us were desperate to get away after the ups and downs of the last few days. I helmed Chelone down the Haven and we raised the mainsail. Free at last!

Soon we were passing St Annes head and let out the Genoa. With Southwesterlies forecast for Sunday night, we headed out on a course to give us as much Westing as possible. Wind NE force 5.

Very comfortable. We were 42 miles NW of St Marys in the Scillies by my watch at 01:00 Sunday. During the day we kept watch together, but at night we kept strict watches of 2hrs each.

I loved it. Yes, I was tired, but we were at sea, after so much anticipation.

It was overcast on Sunday and the wind backed and strengthened. We put a reef in the main and soon started seeing 25 knots and more, now Westerly, now Southwesterly.

We were 100 miles and more to the West of Ushant as our course took us SE into Biscay, close hauled, the occasional 30  knots appearing. By my 05:30 watch on Monday there was water over the gunwhales and occasionally into the cockpit. I could barely make out the lights on the fishing boats weaving around us and they kept disappearing from our AIS screen and then appearing again just a mile away, hidden by the swells.

I was knackered by now and slept until after midday. When I got up it was all change. Wind down to F3 and sunny. Container ships made their way past and it was warm enough not to need a jacket.

As the day wore on the wind dropped and dropped and was just 5 knots as we motored into a balmy evening. I cooked tortellini in a sauce of onions, garlic, courgettes, peppers an basil in olive oil. Seemed to go down well.

My watches that night were 20:00-22:00 and 04:00 -0600. Biscay was now benign, flat with just 3 knots of wind and a full moon.

Tuesday

Ships passed to the west of us heading South and to the east of us heading North. Chelone has AIS which was extremely useful. It was simple enough to find the course and direction of each ship and take the necessary action.

The other benefit of the AIS was the fact that they could see us, and we could watch them change direction. Knowing the name of the ship also meant we got a friendly response when we called them on VHF, often just to ask if they could see us, our lights, radar reflection or AIS signal. The AIS system on Chelone is Transas m4b. as well as ouputting to chartplotter via nmea, it talks to a pc, through usb ports. Using the free OpenCPN charting system, we thus had full backup. Opencpn can also overlay grib files, another good point.

Chelone also has an icom hf radio, which we used in conjunction with a program called Mscan meteo to get weather faxes. Left on all night, we had a full set of charts going forward 96 hours or more, ready to view in the morning.

Great fun this morning. The cruise ship Oceana passed to our starboard side.

John couldnt resist calling her on vhf. They were more than happy to give us a weather report and even send an email on our behalf. The forecast was not good. 4-5m swells and 25 knots from the South West for tomorrow night (Wednesday). The rest of the day passed slowly. I made a potato and leek soup, which went down well. A couple of hours before sunset we raised the staysail which gave us another hallf knot, pushing Chelone's speed over 7 knots. It was a high point for me too, the first time I'd sailed a cutter rig.

With just 8 knots of wind from the Northeast, my 22:00 watch was easy. By my second watch at 06:00, I was knackered again, but, as the sun rose, a golden ball in the SouthEast, I caught my first glimpse of Spain. We'd crossed Biscay. The weather was taking a turn for the worst, though, with 30 knot Westerlies forecast for the evening on Wednesday. We hoped we could get around the corner to Bayonne, on Spain's West coast before then, but had a fallback plan of La Coruna, on the North coast, if that failed.

By 10:00 the wind was a steady 13 knots SE. Just three hours later though, it suddenly increased to 20 knots from the SW. It was clear within 1/2 hour that we were not going to make Bayonne. We turned and enjoyed a lovely downwind sail into La Corunna, tying up in Darsenna marina at 18:00, in time for a beer.