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Month: July 2022

Instagram Post

Instagram Post

"Fun" day in a marina, washing all of the things… Deck, clothes, bedding, etc…We will be back at anchor tommorrow, but until then, here is what it looks like at night.Wind picking up, hope people have their halyards secured! (Oh wait no, I head them all banging…)Check out today's blog https://sailinghannahpenn.co.uk/?p=506#liveaboard #sailinglife #sailinghannahpenn #marina

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Day 42: A needed marina trip

Day 42: A needed marina trip

After Adam doused the bed in the saloon in salt water, we needed to do some laundry. We also didn’t have much water left on board (7.5 inches left of 25) so rather than use up the last of on water it’s time for a marina!

A short marina call & journey

We could actually see the marina from the anchorage. We also looked up the Marina in the Navily app. it’s says they have somewhere to do laundry, hooray! So the main next steps are 1) make sure they have space and 2) head over there…

Only 500m so no map this time

As Captain, Kathryn had the task of calling the marina, but not before preparing some phases incase there was no English speaker.

  • Do you speak English?
    • habla usted Inglés?
  • Can you speak slowly, my Spanish is poor.
    • Puedes hablar despacio, mi español es pobre.
  • Do you have space available today?
    • Tienes espacio disponible hoy?
  • eleven point five meters
    • once punto cinco metros
  • three point two meters
    • tres punto dos metros
  • the draft is one point six meters
    • el calado es de uno punto seis metros

The phone call went well, and we were all set for arrival at 11am, which was 25 minuites later! So anchor up, and on our way.

We switched roles for this little journey with Kathryn running around on deck doing anchors, fenders and lines while Adam took the helm getting us away from the anchorage, through the harbour entrance and into the slip.

You can see our old anchorage in the background of our new slip.

Hannah moored up in the slip

Paper work down, passports scanned, insurance emailed over and €32 paid we were all set.

Wash everything

Task 1, wash all of the things. It turned out that there was no laundry room at the marina, so we had to do this onboard, but with plenty of fresh water.

A sheet being washed in the sink

We also used the fresh water to wash the salt off the hull from yesterday morning, along with a quick deck scrub and also rinsing all of our water gear.

Everything was hung out around the boat. At 34 degrees it was would be dry in no time.

Hannah covered in things drying

Plan Q & Supermarket run

We are preparing for guests. The plan has changed slightly. We will no longer be aiming for Porto for the 2nd August, instead aiming for Vigo. So not Portugal, but Spain instead, and just a little way south of where we currently are.

This is primarily because anchoring in Portugal seems like a bit of a pain, and we think our guests will have more fun if we spend the first week on the west coast of Galicia, Spain. Lots of fun anchorages etc.

This is probably plan Q, we have lost count.

We will be eating 2.5x the ammount of food when we have 5 people aboard, so time to stock up a bit.

Some of the supermarket haul

Day 41: Escaping a rockey anchorage

Day 41: Escaping a rockey anchorage

As said at the end of day 40, we were in a new anchorage with only 1 review. It turns out it was a bit rubbish for the conditions we were in, and it was a bit of a rockey night.

Moving anchorage

You can see in the picture below, these were not exactly glassy conditions.

Choppy water in the anchorage

We were up early because of the rocking, and decided to head off before breakfast in the direction of a shortlist of better anchorages based on the conditions.

The wind was having quite a “mad one” and flipped the dinghy over while we were beating through wind waves that were breaking over the deck.

Dinghy upsidedown out of the back cockpit window

We sailed using a mixture of Genoa and mizen, leaving the main down, and the first anchorage we passed looked great so headed in.

Much more pleasant location in these winds, I expect we will be here for a day or 2.

Boat jobs & relaxation

Let’s skip the boat jobs part and just say that Adam managed to drench the inside of the boat with salt water while trying to wash the deck (the window was open)…

We tried out the water, it’s still quite cold, but went and found the anchor with our wetsuits on.

Day 40: Louro to Ribeira

Day 40: Louro to Ribeira

The feeling this morning is “I can’t believe we are motoring again… We finished wrapping up all of the previous blog posts this morning, then set out for a sail, to somewhere exciting so that we can get in the water.

A side note here is this means we will aim to write these sail logs as we go, so they might get longer, but also more accurate…

Starting the sail

Half an hour in, we are still motoring out to sea with all of the sails up, but not much wind…

All of Hannah’s sails up, hauled in as far as possible

Don’t worry though, 35 minuites in we turned the motor off managing 2-3 knots.

An hour later, we came to a stop and started motoring again. Where is the wind?????

Time to reef

Don’t worry, the wind appeared. Once we got fully out of the mouth the wind picked up and we started speed along while Adam was trying to cook the Needle fish from yesterday for lunch!

We started to reduce our sail area, first the mizen came down, then we reefed the genoa, and finally started reefing the main, planning on putting 2 reefs in.

We got past the first reefing line, but the sail stopped coming down half way to the second reef. What was it stuck on?

Looking up we saw one of the sail lugs caught in a feeder line (string) that we have in place to add a second halyard. This meant that we could reef no more, so we raised the sail back to the first reef.

After a couple of gybes downwind on a less rocky point of sail Adam headed up the mast in a bosun’s chair to untangle the mess (which ended up being quick and easy).

Navigating to anchor

We carried on for the rest of the day with a half reefed Genoa and 1 reef in the main. The fish cooking effort had to be restarted once all of the excitement had died down.

The next effort was navigating to our anchorage. We had to change our plan, as we discovered that you need a navigation and anchoring permit for some islands in the area (where we were originally planning on anchoring for the night).

Our new target was a beach that looked well protected from the Atlantic swells, but this meant a change of course, and also navigation around the conservation area that we shouldn’t enter without a permit.

You can see the conservation area boundary line in red below which we should stay north of. This will take us within 10s of feet of some quite shallow areas, and also take us generally through a shallow area that will be funneling the swell.

Screenshot of navionics, showing the norther border of a protected area

It’s the closest we have been to the coast, shallows or rocks in a while when actually out sailing, but all went smoothly.

The rocks nearby

At the anchorage

We found this anchorage on Navily with a single review, so we could have been heading into anything.

Anchoring in around 7-8m, and it was quite windy to start with. We were the only boat around so we ended up putting 40m of chain out.

Adam went for a quick adventure under the boat cleaning the waterline on his way.

Adam scrubbing the waterline

Kathryn prepared some tasty tasty dinner including flat breads from a sour dough starter, and soup for dinner.

Sour dough flat bread and carrot soup

Tweet from Adam (July 29, 2022 at 02:08PM)

Tweet from Adam (July 29, 2022 at 02:08PM)

Caught a needlefish last night and filleted it up
It’s meant to have a blueish tint in the flesh, and that is very apparent when taking it out of the fridge this morning
#sailinghannahpenn https://t.co/sSbScF5iFp
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Welcome to the blog

Welcome to the blog

🎵🎵

Welcome to the blog
Have a look around
Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found
We’ve got mountains of content
Some better, some worse
If none of it’s of interest to you, you’d be the first

Welcome to the blog
Come and take a seat
Would you like to see the news
Or and any floppy seal feet

There’s no need to panic
This isn’t a test [laughs]
Just nod or shake your head and we’ll do the rest

🎵🎵 — Poor take on a Bo Burnham song


But seriously, welcome to the Hannah Penn blog.

You’ll find our Instagram and Twitter content here when posted, along with some longer-form blog posts of all sailing, some land adventures, and other fun or interesting stuff we get up to. Boat things, posts to the nic 38 owners group and more.

Make sure you head all the way to the first page using the “Older posts” button at the bottom.

Or head to Day 1: The River Dart (splash) to get started. Once there you can use the “Next” or “Previous” buttons at the bottom of the post to follow through.

If you are just interested in fishing, take a look at the #fishing tag linked in the sidebar. Also, find the other main categories there, or just search for stuff.

If you want emails when new posts happen, just pop your email address into the subscribe box and you’ll be notified when new posts happen.

Enjoy, and let us know what you think!

Adam & Kathryn

Day 39: Camarinas to Louro

Day 39: Camarinas to Louro

It was a slow start this morning, we tried to leave our anchorage early to make use of the morning sea breeze as there was very little wind forecast, a sea breeze is when the land and the sea are different temperatures, in the mornings the sea is warmer than the land so the cold air is drawn off the land and over the warm sea as that air rises.. well that’s the idea anyway.

The sea breeze sailing didn’t really go to plan so we very slowly sailed down the coast till we lost the wind completely, sadly having to motor for a little while.

Eventually, we got the wind back and were able to pole out the Genoa with the reaching strut to sail directly downwind

Poled-out Genoa using the reaching strut

We had had the fishing rods out for the whole day again not getting a nibble.. till we had the awkward poled-out sail and then we got a bite! Just our luck!

Adam grabbed the rod whilst I (Kathryn) furled the sail got the engine going and turned so we could bring the fish alongside, ready with the landing net and bucket we brought it closer, excited to see what we had caught!

It came into view but was not the sort of fish we were expecting, we debated letting it go for a moment but decided to give it go and bring it aboard. It turned out to be a 1.3lb Needlefish otherwise called a Garfish which has a greeny blue tint to its flesh.

Our first ‘big’ fish, a Needlefish

So with the fish excitement over we were approaching our chosen anchorage, just in time for the wind to pick up and we had a quick beam reach into the bay just as the sun was setting.

Sunset with the Porpoises

But the day wasn’t over yet when I heard a big breath of air right next to the boat, of course, it was dolphins escorting us in! They stayed with us for over 45mins! The pod was quite large with what looked like a number of generations, mum and baby and a very large older-looking one with a white speckled fin and tail. I actually think these were porpoises, not dolphins as they have a much stubbier nose.

Definitely the best end to a very long day of sailing.

As I’m finishing typing up this Adam is filleting the fish… I’m sure you’ll find out tomorrow how we cook it and how good it was when we eat it for lunch tomorrow 😛

Instagram Post (July 28)

Instagram Post (July 28)

Caught our second fish that's bigger than a mackerel today on the way down the coast of Spain.But this one didn't get away! I introduce you to Mr Needlefish, also known as tomorrow's lunch.We had some quite light wind sailing, so filled out the genoa on a down wind leg making use of the reaching strut.#sailinghannahpenn #fishing #needlefish #reachingstrut #sailinglife #sailing #downwind #nic38 #camperandnicholsons #liveaboard #spain #galicia

Follow us at: https://instagram.com/sailinghannahpenn

Tweet from Adam (July 28)

Tweet from Adam (July 28)

Dinner on a boat Day 30…
Pizza again, but with dough not wraps, and with real mozzarella
And yes, it has a face on it!
#sailinghannahpenn #onaboat https://t.co/209HN1JNW3
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