Made it across Biscay

Whilst in La Rochelle we met two lovely Irish couples, Joe, Yvonne, Sean and Mary who we rafted against for the first two days of our stay, and who we spent  a couple of pleasant evenings.
My daughter Claire arrived in La Rochelle on the 15th June to a glorious sunny day, after dumping her bag off at the boat we hit the town and went browsing round the shops, all we bought was a pair of sunglasses each, so I now have about four pairs, in the evening we had an enjoyable time consuming more wine, chatting and  catching up on things.

Chilling out

 On the Saturday the weather had changed dramatically to rain so much of that day was spent on the boat lazing about, in the evening we decided to eat out. We found a nice looking restaurant and using what little French I know acquired a table for three, the menu looked good and we all chose a starter and a main, unfortunately the meal wasn’t as good as we had hoped when it arrived, however the wine which was selected by Kevin was very good. After the meal we took a stroll back to the boat, by now the town was lit up making it look very picturesque.

Late evening in La Rochelle

Sunday the day of Claires return it was back to being sunny again, unfortunately Claire had to leave by 8 am so was not able to have any time to bask in the sunshine.

Claire waiting for taxi home

The rest of Sunday was spent getting the boat ready for our passage across Biscay the following day, once the chores were done is was back to basking in the sunshine, we needed to get as much rest as possible as we wouldn’t be getting much sleep over the next few days, that was my reasoning anyway. On Monday the sun was shining again so we set off and headed towards north Spain, the day was uneventful and I took the first watch at 9pm. Kevin took over at 12 midnight, and no sooner had I settled down for some sleep the wind increased and it started to rain. From then on it rained on and off for the rest of the passage, the waves were a good couple of metres which meant we were rolling about quite a lot. After a hundred nautical miles into our journey we no longer saw any birds or fishing boats, this continued until about 70 miles off the Spanish coast. The bonus however was that we got to see five pods of dolphins each of which swam alongside the boat for some considerable time, we even had one pod with us at 12 midnight on the Tuesday, and although you couldn’t see them clearly they looked to be illuminated in the water so when they swam towards the boat they looked like torpedoes.

Hard to catch a good shot of a Dolphin

We finally arrived in Gijon at about 08:30 on the Wednesday having completed the 266 nm crossing in approximately 48 hours , moored up and went to bed to get some well-earned kip. Gijon is quite a large city, with plenty of shops but no really good supermarkets which I have now become obsessed with since starting our journey, I used to be more into shopping for clothes, not any more. Gijon has a nice beach and some lovely parks. While in Gijon we had our first visit from a customs officer, he could speak almost no English and we could not speak Spanish, but eventually we had the paperwork complete and he happily went on his way. We are now hoping that if we get another visit here in Spain we can just show them our copy of the paperwork and they will be happy. Well you can dream can’t you? We spent three nights in Gijon before moving on to a lovely little bay about twenty miles west of Gijon where we anchored up for the night, as the swell was coming into the bay we thought we may end up rocking and rolling all night, but surprisingly we didn’t and we had a good night’s sleep, or it may just have been the amount of wine consumed what knocked us out.

No traffic noise from the road bridge, it must be all the trees!

The following day we made our way to Ribadeao which so far is the most expensive marina we have been in. During our sail across (well we motored actually as there was no wind at all) we came across a large branch of a tree floating by followed by a wild Boar (obviously swimming was not its forte) The marina is located in one of the Rias and is very pleasant and not too big or busy unlike the last three marinas we were in in France.
The weather at the moment is great, lovely and warm and our tans are coming along nicely, we are planning to move on tomorrow but not sure where to at the moment it very much depends on the weather. At the moment there is no wind and so we can’t sail and we don’t want to keep motoring, it seems that we either have too much wind or none at all. Over the next few weeks we plan to anchor where we can as we both enjoy the solitude and tranquillity it gives you, weather permitting that is.

Total distance to date:  868  nautical miles
Our present location: https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?saddr=43.539092,-7.038803&hl=en&sll=43.552032,-6.827316&sspn=0.377215,1.003876&mra=mift&mrsp=0&sz=11&t=m&z=11