Throwback Thursday again, here is our maiden voyage with Hannah Penn back in August 2020.Bought in Salcombe, she had to be re-homed to a trot mooring on the River Dart.We waited out a storm in Salcombe for a few days before heading out for the first time.Everything looks lovely and peaceful as we sail head into the Dart.Hannah originally came with a dory (the small boat), but this was quickly sold.#sailinghannahpenn #sailing #nic38 #camperandnicholsons #dartmouth #boat #throwback #throwbackthursday #maidenvoyage
We are still planning on getting to Porto, Portugal for the 2nd August, so we need to work our way down the Spanish and Portuguese coast, while also finding time to relax, and enjoy some of the coastline, as well as break up the sailing.
We came up with a very detailed plan, as can be seen on the whiteboard to the right.
This plan started off with some more time near A Coruna after the Biscay crossing to relax. Followed by a 60 nautical mile dash around the corner of Spain to get away from some 1.7 to 1.9 meter swell that was meant to be coming in.
So the 26th of July or Day 36 was the day to set off!
We set off around just before noon as the morning was showing very light wind. The sails went up straight out of the anchorage, and we set course on our heading for the first half of the hop.
Fishing
Fishing jumped to the top of our minds again, and we set up both rods, one looking for mackerel and one looking for bigger fish.
We were quickly successful for mackerel catching one rather swiftly.
Mackeral from the crossing
Catching some rope
The other rod wasn’t having so much fun, there was lots of seaweed and other stuff in the water.
At least we were doing our little bit to clean up the oceans…
We were trying a whole range of different lures on the main line, as we are both fairly new to catching anything other than Mackerel and wanted to work out what was best for fihsing while underway.
We settled on a 10cm jerk bait lure (Read about jerk baits here) which seemed to work quite well at 3-6 knots, not putting to much strain on the line, but also managing to stay at the right depth.
After 5 hours of having the line of having the line out with this lure for the first time something bit! We quickly got to the rod, which was in a rod holder, and started trying to reel whatever was at the end in. We generally prepared for landing our biggest fish yet (not a mackerel), with our landing net etc.
Braided fishing line with half a knot in the end
A few minutes passed as we were fighting the fish, occasionally seeing it pop out of the water. It was getting closer and closer to the boat. Unfortunately, when it was about 20 meters back the line became slack, and reeling it in we discovered that the knot attaching the main line to the leader line had either pulled through or snapped.
You can see the reel, with half of the knot still in tack in the image to the right.
Not only did we not land our first big fish, but unfortunateely this fish is probably now stuck with this lure and line.
Another late anchor
The wind was lighter than we would have liked, so we lost some time during our sailing compared with our plan. It also dropped off sooner than expected and we had to motor for the last part of this hop.
All of this led to us once again anchoring in the dark, this time around 2am.
Spanish beach day. Lovely clear water deep in the bay that A Coruna lies on. There were even dolphins just off the beach a little while ago#sailinghannahpenn #sailinglife #beach #spain #beachday #clearwater #sunshine
Biscay was the biggest crossing in the first months of the trip. As the crow flies the bay is around 300 nautical miles wide. Our channel crossing from the Isles of Scilly to Brest was closer to 100 nautical miles.
As the crossing was going to take a few days, the main task in the days and weeks ahead of setting off was finding a weather window that both provided wind for sailing and a bit of comfort too (not too much swell).
The window we were aiming for primarily had a north or northwesterly wind around 10 to 20 knots with 1.2 to 1.7m swell, but also had a high pressure passing through the bay around the evening of day 33 which would give us a big lull before some easterly wind to finally bring us to A Coruna, Spain.
We used Fast Seas weather routing to come up with the initial route, and we used our Garmin InReach throughout the crossing to update this weather routing, and also to get weather updates. The route remained mostly the same throughout the crossing, although we ended up crossing in around 20 hours less than the initially predicted 3 days 12 hours. (Very satisfying).
Throughout the crossing, we literally saw hundreds of dolphins, too many to count, in 10s of different pods throughout the various days.
I may have seen more dolphins I'm the past 3 days than I have in my entire life 🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬🐬 pic.twitter.com/1MvreFM9MB
Wet set off across the Bay of Biscay on Thursday, now around 55 hours in and we can see Spain!Should reach out anchorage this evening or early in the morningA picture wouldn't the the stars at night with a clear sky and no moon justice (also impossible to take on a moving boat), so here is a sunset and some boaty water pics#sailinghannahpenn #sailing #sailinglife #bayofbiscay #nic38 #camperandnicholsons #sunset
On the way to the bay of Biscay today and we have already seen at least 6 or 8 different dolphin pods #sailinghannahpenn #sailing #sailinglife #brestbretagne #dolphins #wildlife
Been working on a little SMS based weather tool for use with satalite communicators such as the Garmin Inreach So far only doing sun and moon rise and sets, as well as moon phase, but looking promising! ☀️🌘🌕 pic.twitter.com/y4PESLiIuY
