Northern Spain
We sailed from La Rochelle, France on Monday August 20th, heading for Gijon, Spain. En route, we had everything from being becalmed to a force 7. On the first night at sea, the sunset was beautiful. Early the following morning, a tiny bird used us as a resting spot for and hour or so before continuing his journey.
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Gijon
We arrived in Gijon on August 22nd and spent a couple of days relaxing and visiting the many monuments. Our departure from Gijon was delayed as we waited for a large tanker to leave the commercial harbour.
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La Coruna
We arrived in La Coruna on Saturday 25th August. We couldn't get into the marina, so spent two nights at anchor inside the breakwater. The old fort by the marina is lit up at night. The mornings here are extremely misty, so much so that we couldn't see the boats anchored around us. We waited until Monday morning to get spare sliders for the main sail from the chandlers and replaced the slider that had broken on our way from Gijon.
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Camarinas
We left La Coruna, aiming to saill directly to Bayona. Getting stuck in an incredible three hour thunderstorm tired us out and we pulled into Camarinas at 0330 (Sorry no pictures of amazing pyrotechnics - we were too busy counting elephants). Later that day we explored the village and walked to the wind farm and the Cabo Vilan Lighthouse.
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Bayona
We left Camarinas on August 29th and motor sailed towards Bayona. Despite forecasts of north westerly winds, we motor sailed against southerly winds all the way. Three dolphins played in our bow wave for about twenty minutes. We arrived in Bayona at 0030 the following morning, to be met by a club boat, who helped us find a mooring buoy. As we got to the buoy, we lost our forward gear. We had to wait until September 11th to be lifted out, so that the local engineer could investigate the problem. Much as this was annoying, Bayona is a nice town and there was plenty to see in the area, including a replica of the Caravel Pinta, which marks the arrival of La Pinta with news of the discovery of the new world in March 1493, and the Parador Conde de Gondomar.
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Once we were lifted out onto the hard, the saildrive was removed and taken away to the engineer's workshop in Vigo. Meanwhile, Gillian went down to Lisbon by train to meet up with Joe and Robin met up with them in Oporto a week later. See the Portugal page and A 'Pilgrimage' to Oporto for details.
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After many visits from the engineers, we are now back in the water and the gearbox is working again . The weather has deteriorated as a depression skirts the north of Spain, so we will stay in Bayona for a couple more days before heading done the Portuguese coast.
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