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Day 40: Louro to Ribeira

Day 40: Louro to Ribeira

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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

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 31-34: Biscay, from France to Spain

Day 31-34: Biscay, from France to Spain

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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.

As we were far ahead of schedule when making landfall we got to our anchorage at around 3am and anchored in the dark.

Waking up around noon the next day, according to the plan we would still be sailing, but instead, we headed to the beach to relax.