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Day 39: Camarinas to Louro

Day 39: Camarinas to Louro

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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 😛

Day 36-37: A Coruna to Camariñas

Day 36-37: A Coruna to Camariñas

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The plan, drawn up on a whiteboard

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.

Day 30: Brest to Crozon

Day 30: Brest to Crozon

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In order to shorten the Biscay crossing, similar to our thinking when leaving the Isles of Scilly, we wanted to get as far south as possible without actually entering the bay too much. We looked at our options and the time that we had before our weather window and decided to aim for Crozon.

This was a short hop down the coast, but we were beating into the wind to get out of Brest which took quite some time.

Here is a funny-looking rock that we went past…

Rock between Brest and Crozon

And once anchored, here was our delicious dinner!

Day 23: St Helens Pool to St Marys

Day 23: St Helens Pool to St Marys

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On Day 22 we were exploring Tresco island, but as August drew closer, we needed to try and get across the channel and Biscay with some good weather. Tomorrow (day 24) looked good for a channel crossing, so we wanted to prepare by getting as far south and east in the Isles of Scilly as possible.

Our anchorage of choice was on St Marys south side, and the route we chose took us through the Isles.

We arrived at our anchorage fairly late and it was quite busy so we anchored on the outside which lead to a slightly rolly night.

More on this anchorage in the Day 24 post…

Day 21: Eastern Isles to St Helens pool

Day 21: Eastern Isles to St Helens pool

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Keen to explore more of the Isles of Scilly before needing to carry on the with the journey to Porto we switched anchorages to St Helens pool, and anchorage that should be protected from all directions of swell.

Our current anchorage of the Eastern Isles also didn’t look great for the coming days.

Our little hop took us out, and counter clockwise (west) along the top of the Isles. There wasn’t much wind, and the sails were quite flappy, but we needed to move!

This anchorage was quite beautiful, as you can see the open ocean to the north, east and west, yet the swell doesn’t reach you due to the shallows.

And absolutely stunning sunsets.

Day 19: St Michael’s Mount to Penzance

Day 19: St Michael’s Mount to Penzance

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One of our shortest hops coming up here!

We anchored at St Michael’s Mount to protect ourselves from some of the North Easterly winds, but day 19 brought some calm.

We wanted to head to Penzance to top up our diesel and water tanks and to try and pick up a replacement Calor gas bottle. We also had some friends that may come to visit so wanted an easy and safe place to leave the dingy!

We just sailed across with the geona again, but it took no time at all.

You can see this track includes 1) anchoring outside the harbour to wait for fuel 2) heading into the harbour behind the sil, turning around and coming back to the fuel barge 3) heading back out of the harbour to anchor back up where we would be spending the night.

We headed to shore in the dingy through the outer harbour which is not behind a sil and headed for some dinner being picked up by our friends that were driving. When reaching Newly we ate at Mackerel Sky Cafe. Delicious, but no picutres.

We managed to find a Calor gas bottle at the local morisons, did a little shop, had some on land showers before heading back to Hannah.

Day 18: Housel Cove to St Michael’s Mount

Day 18: Housel Cove to St Michael’s Mount

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Time to head to Penzance (ish)!

Before setting off this mainly looked like a big sail upwind as we were in a northerly wind.

After 6 hours of sailing and a couple of tacks, we found ourselves nearing Penzance.

It was lovely and flat in the bay, even quite some way out and made for some very nice sailing.

Penzance Harbour is behind a sil and at the time of our arrival the sil was closed (we already knew this). We had the option of using a mooring ball outside the harbour, anchoring outside the harbour, and using a different anchorage.

St Michael’s Mount looked like it gave good protection (and a nice view) so we headed to it!

You can see us approaching the Mount below.

The anchorage was rather windy, we were sheltered there with 3 other boats, one of them arrived with us, re-anchored a few times and then decided to leave for somewhere else.

We stayed put in the winds, charged up a bit with the wind turbine and generally relaxed.

(In this sort of wind a trip to the shore in the dinghy is not really much fun)

By the evening, the wind had dropped and it was rather lovely.

Day 17: Helford River to Housel Cove

Day 17: Helford River to Housel Cove

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We wanted to break out the larger journey around to Penzance. We found an anchorage (Housel Cove) on Navionics that looked like it should give us pretty good protection from the swell and wind for the night and headed off!

This was an easy sail again only on a reefed genoa as we were trying to sail at 2-3 knots so we could fish with the paravane as we went.

Although we were ready for the fish, the fish were not there. Even while trying to sail slowly, you can see the bend in the rod as we occasionally hit 4+ knots.

The journey took only 4.5 hours and we found ourselves in Housel Cove which is overlooked by Housel Hotel and Lizard Lighthouse.

We were in the bay all by ourselves, and also had a beach that seemed to be mostly inaccessible from the land, so private for us!

We both got a little artistic on this day.

Kathryn took this very nice looking picture of the deck while we were sailing

Adam took this rather blurry, but perhaps nice to look at picture of Lizard Lighthouse at night from the bay.

Day 16: Falmouth to Helford River

Day 16: Falmouth to Helford River

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Back from a wedding, we wanted to get out of the pricey mooring that we were at and get back to anchoring, so on to the Helford river (a short hop across the bay).

As you can see on the track, we decided our trip would be far too quick, even only sailing with the genoa out.

So we did a few tacks and tried to get as close as possible to a beach where @brendonprince_ was having a little SUP (as he advertised on Instagram).

Didn’t manage to get super close to the beach, but did manage to get this little shot.

Over to Helford we went, maxing out at 7.3 knots with only the genoa (nice!).

The anchorage on the east side of the river was lovely.

Day 8: Saltash to Falmouth

Day 8: Saltash to Falmouth

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We originally planned on heading to Falmouth on Day 6, but ended up in Saltash instead avoiding some weather.

This was the first day that we experimented with weather routing using Fast Seas. You can read a bit about weather routing on Wikipedia, and can take a look at us chatting away about Fast Seas weather routing for Nic 38s on the owner forums.

We had 3 different routes planned with a set of parameters that we were at that point unsure of.

  • Optimistic: Based on a theoretical good into wind angle of 45 degrees. This would take us around 8 hours.
  • Pessimistic: Using a polar that we created from what we thought our actual sailing performance was from back in 2020 and 2021. This would take us around 18 hours.
  • Middle ground: Based on a theoretical “normal” into wind angle of 60 degrees. This would take us around 12 hours.

So quite a range of times.

Each route took us right out into the channel, and with a single tack back all the way into Falmouth.

We went for it, planning for all 3 (or other eventualities), and the middle ground route ended up being roughly what we achieved. We were sailing on our closest point of sail the whole way with 1m swell from the west and 15-25 knts generally from the west.

In the image below you can see the middle route we managed, as well as 2 way points indicating the tack points of the other 2 routes.

Due to the single tack the voyage was quite pleasant 🙂

Instagram Post (June 27)

We headed to a marina, as we had a wedding to attend and wanted to keep Hannah safe and out of the way of others. We arrived in the evening so spent that evening on a visitor pontoon rafter up next to a very lovely yacht that had just come back from the Azores.

So many boats anchored up hiding away from the winds to come.

On day 9 we moved to the inner harbour of Port Pendennis Marina. Exciting day as we took Hannah over her first sil and through a swinging bridge.