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 !

Yesterday we did the next hop and said good bye to Weymouth and it’s WiFi-less marina. The weather report is as always wrong and instead of having a smooth ride towards Falmouth with 2-3Bft, we have 4-5Bft and pretty ugly waves force us to do a detour towards Brixham. So we’ll save the passage to Falmouth for another day and wait for better weather in Brixham.
I say weather because with the wind, we already gave up. In the beginning we would still wait for a good wind to sail. After more than two months we now use any wind that is not too strong to gain a few miles to the west – even under engine. About 65 more miles to Falmouth and from then we *should* have the wind on our side – so to say. But as I watch the Bay of Biscay during the last days, it doesn’t seem that there are good winds there either. Hmmmm. Enough of the ranting…

Our friend Wolfgang just sent us an email with lots of corrections to our website. With his help the section about our ship will soon be nearly typo-free ! Yay ! (Well, at least the German version. ;-)

Thursday we finally can hoist the sails again and we’re enjoying a wonderful trip through the ‘birthplace of sailing’. Via radio we listen a dramatic Mayday situation involving chopper, we see the Alinghy (although we don’t recognize her) and plenty of other racing yachts. We also come quite close to one of the last hovercrafts and have plenty of opportunities to practice the rules of way. There are more sailboats here than in the Kieler and Flensburger Foerde together. Hehehe. In the evening we put into Yarmouth – the oldest township on the Isle of Wight. A really lovely spot with plenty of nice pubs. (One main focus point as you can see ;-)

The next day – because there’s no suitable wind to continue – we’re using the afternoon for a little trip with our dinghy. We go up the River Yar and see some nice houses and an old church. In the evening it’s ‘harbour-cinema’ again. Because of the tide going in and out there are always quite chaotic maneuvers to be seen (ours not excluded). Quite before leaving we were actually crashed into by a smaller boat. Luckily we choose a steel ship – no harm done.

Friday we’re leaving the Solent and pass by the famous Needles – where we cheer with a nice Guinness. ;-) We sail nicely along the increasingly interesting coastline and while passing Anvil Point – we actually get our private flight show by the famous Rad Arrows ! In darkness we enter Weymouth, where we spend the night in front of the flap bridge that will open saturday at eight in the morning. We have fish & chips for a midnight snack and fall into bed. Early in the morning (for us it’s actually 7 o’clock, as we’re on UTC) – we enter the marina and see Michael to the train station. It was a wonderful week together with him – we really hope we’ll see each other earlier than when we return to Berlin.

And now I sit here typing away in the pub. The text that I’ve written earlier while on the ship, I now translated and put the pictures in order. In the harbour the internet costs 3,50 Punds PER HOUR (!!!!!!!) and that’s quite a normal tariff here. It’s really a punch in the face – especially since the marinas here are also impressingly expensive. Well, we’re gonna focus more on the Guinness and less on the internet. :-)

Together with Michael we leave Brighton and soon disappear in thick fog. Of course the wind also dissipates and so we steer towards Shoreham, because we don’t wanna motor through the fog. There we arrive quite in time to find our friends Silke and Dieter mooring their boat in front of the lock.

So we spend the evening chatting and using some remote WLAN to surf the net – thanks again to the LunaWLANnet antenna – it’s really amazing to have internet access in the middle of nowhere. And thanks to our on board WLAN, our friends get to use our connection while we spend the evening together. Late in the evening, the water is high enough an the lock opens and we can sail into the Lady Bee marina where we spend the night.

The next day we don’t have any wind, so we’re again using our engine to sail together with the SY Tamora towards the Solent. The best opportunity to put into harbour is in the entrance towards Chichester, where after motoring against a really strong current, we drop the anchor for the very first time since the beginning of our journey, two months ago. There’s a really nice and also interesting beach only two minutes away with the dinghy (rowing). The night is completely without wind and without the sound of nearby streets or cities.  Sweet dreams.

Yesterday the time has come and we finally crossed over The Channel towards England. So now we’re in Dover and already planning to leave as we we’d like to spend the next days in Brighton.

The crossing was quite uneventful and the traffic not that much I think it was more near Cuxhaven, at the exit of the NOK. In Dover we parked the Rancho Relaxo in the Granville Docks and soon after found ourselves in a really nice Pub drinking a pint of Guinnes, eating chips and burgers and enjoying ourselves.