A first atlantic contact

Our first ‘bluewater’ trip is now history and as we’ve arrived in Spain, we’re now in the midst of a completely different (sailing-) world. Suddenly there are nearly no charter yachts but plenty of quite individualistic cruising yachts. We’re surrounded with ship’s with flags from England, Ireland, France, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Germany and lots more. But actually I wanted to write about our trip through the Bay of Biscay. Well, I’ll start with a few numbers. So we sailed 525 nm in total from Brixham to La Coruña. Our daily runs were 139, 111, 120, 101 and 54 nautical miles. That gives an average speed of 4,81 knots. Yeah, we had a relaxed trip so to say. Hehe.

Under the coast of England, we crossed the field of the Fastnet Race and saw plenty of nice racing yachts. Of which most of them were underway with 3 or 4 times our speed. For the first two and a half days we had the wind from ENE and sailed butterfly (how’s that called in english ?!?) most of the time, which makes for quite a shakey cruise. The capitana was a little green around the nose and also the skipper was not always amused with the -15/+15 degrees rolling of the Rancho Relaxo. The second day our friends from the SY Tamora appear in our wake and bring with them a big group of Dolphins that stay with us for about an hour.

Having arrived in a high pressure area, at night we have a clear sky with stars all around and in a multitude I’ve never before seen. For hours I lie in the cockpit, staring around using our binoculars. But of course as it happens with high pressure – the wind vanishes and leaves us with a flat sea and a long, westerly swell that probably was sent to us by some icelandic low, faaar away. Lying at night in the bunk, it feels as if the ocean is breathing, lifting the boat up and down in an 30 second rythm.

On the third day, we get a visit from a whale about the size of our ship and shortly after from a group of Dolphins. Right after the wind is back and we sail through incredibly busy shiptraffic towards Spain, where the wind again disappears. With 1-2 Beaufort and riding along with 1.5-2 knots one is tempted to start the engine – but NO. We’ve got plenty of time and the wind will eventually come back.

In the morning a slight breeze pushes us more towards the coast where we see land at 0915 in the morning. Funny enough what we see is called ‘Cabo Prior’ – and only shortly after we find the famous Torre de Hercules on our starboard side. We’ve arrived in Spain !

After we’ve had a three-hour shower we take our folding bikes and pedal through the city in search for something nice to eat. And we find the perfect place in form of the ‘El Rey del Jamón’ where we have ‘Boccadillos de Jamón Ibérico de bellota’, queso manchego y pan con tomate y aceite and more. Gui has two ice cold beers and I two glasses of red wine. Wow, we’re really having a good time !! We meet a lovely venezuelian/english family, have an endless chat, another ice cream and finally leave for the playground. At 21hrs we fall into our bunks and are sleeping like stones. Yeah, with the sleep that’s still an issue on longer cruises. Because of the watches we only have four hours of sleep during the night and to make up for that loss during the daytime is not always easy with the kids also requireing attention. But we’re working on that. Right now we look forward to a couple of nice weeks in spanish and portugese bays, a visit from Austria and nice, warm weather !