Endurance and Enjoyment

Hello Jan here

A lot has happened since my last post; some good and some more tedious than we expected.

In my last post we were eating miles to get to Porto to meet our daughter Miranda. When we realised we had to skip briskly by the coast of Galicia and the northern Spanish rias; we were thinking 'what a shame' as on paper we had been looking forward to a more leisurely exploration of this bit of coast; but I don't know whether we have just had bad luck or whether this is the normal state of things ...but we didn't mind by-passing it in the least. In fact we couldn't wait to get further south because once again we have been plagued by tediously long journeys in cold weather and fog.  Not at all pleasant.

But Porto was a delight. We arrived on time and were very excited to see our daughter!

I have no idea why Porto has not crossed our radar before.  Neither of us can recall a single person we know from our well travelled friends saying 'You must go to Porto!'  Well we are both saying 'You must go to Porto,'  It was fabulous!  A perfect city break if ever there was one.

From a sailor's point of view the marina is by the sea and the city action is quite a bit further upstream.  The very helpful lady in the marina office assured us it was a 15 minute walk. It isn't.!!!..its at least 50 minutes to the main part of the city...we timed it several times as we walked it every day for 5 days!

It's an interesting walk though; passing by derelict waterside port warehouses and abandoned stately piles all temptingly for sale..provoking conversations about  'Grand Designs' opportunities and massive opportunities to create roof top bars of which there seem to be none yet but which probably reflect the current state of the Portuguese economy. More of a challenge returning when its getting late and you just want to get to bed! 

What a great house to renovate

Old waterside port houses for sale

Right next to the bridge and just asking to become a roof top bar and restaurant! 

The city itself is a riot of colour and texture built on steep hillsides, with plenty of hidden shaded alleyways and shops to explore, peppered with beautiful towers, churches and imposing architecture. Restaurants and bars are everywhere and there is a great energy about the whole city. This may have been fuelled by the fact that we arrived accidentally during the annual festival of St Joao when everyone was gearing up for the big event with fireworks and a massive influx of visitors. 

View from above the bridge

View from the bridge

The very busy waterside

Certainly worth going for the fireworks alone. Those of you who know Greg, will be aware that he is a firework afficionado.  Yes it may have been the degree of port consumed  and was certainly before he fell over and took me down with him...but after the fireworks he did say with a teary eye... 'I love this city and these are the best fireworks I've ever seen!'  The beauty of it was that you can get close in a way that is impossible in London! We had ringside seats.

Waiting for the fireworks

Friends who have adopted a similar lifestyle to us have said that the added happiness comes from having visitors to share the experience with you.  I can  understand that and certainly having Miranda and her friend Liv from Melbourne visiting us in Porto made the experience even better. The girls certainly make the boat more decorative than we do!

Our visitors added a bit of glamour to the boat!

The marina gave us free tickets for a tour of Churchill's port cellars which is a relatively new port house. We had never heard of Churchill's and almost didn't go, thinking we would rather go to somewhere with more history.  In the end we went and we were very pleased we did. Churchill's was set up by one of the Graham family after they sold out Grahams...so all of the skill and tradition was used in the making but because they are establishing their network we received an amazing tasting including some of their very best ports. It certainly paid to be appreciative because we seemed to have a lot more tastings on our table than the others!  Ask for Lilia as your guide! We now know that the year of the very best port worth laying down is the 2011 vintage.  And we both were surprised to find that we loved the chilled dry white port.

Greg enjoying the cellars

A few tastings later!

SARDINES!
We have finally had the sardine tasting.  Greg has been obsessed with the fact that every place we have stopped at since south of Brittany has had dedicated shops selling sardines in pretty tins at outrageous prices.  There are whole shops selling just sardines.  Greg has been magnetically attracted to them pointing out the difference between the price of the ones he used to buy for Vlad and these expensive ones in the area where the sardines are actually caught.

Greg marvelling at the price of the pretty tins of sardines

What could be special about these sardines?  We happened to have some tins of sardines on board from our larder sadly left over after Vlad's passing and Greg was given a pretty tin of the posh sardines in a particularly expensive marina as a sop to the cost!

So we had the taste test for lunch this week.

The posh tin from Isle de Groix 5 Euros!

The Sainsbury's 40p tin

Posh on the left, Sainsbury's on the right of the salad!

The verdict  .....the posh ones look prettier but the Sainsbury's ones tasted better.  Thank goodness we have dispensed with that challenge.  I hate sardines. Don't waste your money. 

Well we have now said goodbye to Miranda and Liv and have ploughed on down the Portuguese coast.  We have seen few vessels of any kind. It isn't a fun coast to sail to be honest. As Greg said "its a coast to endure rather than enjoy" due to the swell and wind direction which isn't favourable most of the time.  We are just aiming to get round the corner towards the Algarve and into the Med as soon as possible where we will probably have a few lay days to catch our breath, do some laundry and cleaning and re-provision the boat. There is no evidence of local sailing for pleasure along this Atlantic coast; most people are on a mission to get elsewhere.  

Next news will be from round the corner heading east.....

Now we are in Portugal

We have travelled a fair distance since the last post. We were on a bit of a mission because we had set a date to meet our daughter Miranda in Porto, so there was a long way to go in not a huge amount of time. After our traumatic 200 mile passage through the lightning we arrived in Laredo on the northern coast of Spain and from there we went to Gijon, a distance of around 80 miles. The following day we went on to Ribadeo which was another 60 miles.

To be honest, these passages weren't enjoyable. The wind was consistently from the West so we had to motor all the way which was bad enough, but to cap it all the weather was awful! Having experienced some sunny warm weather as we went further south along the French coast, we had expected it to be even warmer in Spain but in fact all along this Galician coast it was cold at sea and the visibility was dreadful with long periods of thick fog. Jan dug out the hats and gloves that we had stowed thinking now in Spain in mid June we wouldn't need them for a while; and we consoled ourselves with hot chocolate, Cup-a-Soup and switched on the radar.

The last Cup-a-Soup!

Thank God for the radar! Sailing in 20m visibility is terrifying but you can set an alarm on the radar which alerts you if anything enters the guard zone in front of the boat. It was still terrifying but a lot less  scary than it would have been without it.

From Ribadeo we went to La Coruna, and now the wind was from the East so we could sail. There is a saying, "be careful what you wish for". The wind picked up; the wave height increased; and before we knew it there was 25 knots of wind and 3m seas. At the start of the passage I had considered getting out the spinnaker - I was very grateful that I hadn't! Even without the spinnaker we were surfing down waves at over 9 knots and we did at one point go the fastest the boat has ever been at 10.5 knots. Jan said 'thank goodness my mum can't see me!' We were pleased to arrive in one piece.

Entering La Coruna

La Coruna was nice and the weather improved a bit so we decided to give ourselves a rest and stayed there for a couple of days before braving the next stage, which was to include rounding Cape Finisterre and the most westerly point of Europe.

From La Coruna it was on to Ria de Muros and we chose a fairly benign day for this passage so there were no issues en route, but there are a lot of nasty rocks offshore on this coast so we gave them a very wide berth.

From Muros we went on to Bayona. 

On the rough, craggy Atlantic coast in the fog we hadn't dared risk anchoring and the marina berthing fees were starting to add up so when we arrived at the comparatively sheltered spot in Muros we decided to anchor for the first time. That went well so we decided to anchor again in Bayona. The weather was good and we found it such a nice spot we decided to stay for 3 days - a saving of over €150!

Our anchorage in Bayona

From Bayona it was 60 miles to Porto and although sunny and benign when we set off the most horrendous fog descended again.  Nothing we had read in preparation for our journey mentioned this level of fog or the chill on this coast so we are not sure whether it is the norm or we have just been a bit unlucky.

So now we are in Porto for a few days, reunited with our daughter. what a lovely and exciting city this is turning out to be. We will post more details about Porto itself on our next blog

Absolutely terrified

Jan here just back from my few days short trip with friends in Corfu. I stayed in a hotel in Corfu Town with a bath in my ensuite. I had 10 baths in 3 days; it was bliss even if the water smelled of TCP. 

So,.... Greg met me at the train station in La Rochelle having flown back to Bordeaux and said 'As soon as we get back to the boat we need to leave for a 30 hour trip across the bottom of Biscay to get to northern Spain.' We are on a mission to meet up with our daughter in Porto in Portugal on 19th June which entails some serous mileage. 'No problem' I chirped even though I had just travelled overnight and slept at Bordeaux airport on a row of metal chairs. You can take the girl out of Hebden Bridge but you can't take the hippy out of the girl! 

 Anyway I arrived at La Rochelle at 12.15 and by 13.00 we were casting off! Greg had provisioned the boat (he had been to the supermarket to buy me strawberries and the Offie to buy red wine!....) and had checked the weather...winds not too strong for the next few days. No problem...it was a sunny start and all was well with the world. I engaged in a bit of pre-election chat and coaching with my children on my phone, then we went out of range of social media!

It was all going swimmingly well until night fell and we were about 60 miles offshore with not another vessel in sight. As it darkened and became obvious that the full moon was struggling to peep through the dense clouds, I spotted the first flash. 'Could that possibly have been lightning Greg?!' Of course it was bloody lightning..... the whole sky became like a firework display! I have never ever been so terrified in my life. I was screaming at Greg to turn the boat away from the storm, the clouds were looming thunderously! He was trying to explain how pointless that was given the speed of travel of the storm. I was a gibbering wreck. Greg kept saying that the worst that could happen would be the instruments would be cindered! OMG. I can't believe you could be next to a mast struck by lightning (and lets face it we were the only idiots out there with a tall metal mast waving like a prong saying hit me, hit me!) Surely the least would be our eyeballs would be melted! Look at this picture and tell me that no damage other than a bit of electronic disturbance would be the result of a direct hit!!! 

I'm not religious but in times like this I pray to anything, make ridiculous promises and pacts, try to be grown up and thankful for everything I have.... but at the end of the day I do not want to die, especially on election night..what if Corbyn won...how would I know what happens next? Look on the bright side I told myself.... I was feeling so sick with anxiety I couldn't eat anything... if I survive the night I might weigh less tomorrow. Shamefully superficial I admit but these are the rubbish and random thoughts of a woman convinced that the end is nigh! 

Well obviously we made it - otherwise I wouldn't be writing the blog. Once the lightning died away ..about 2am, the moon reassuringly made a lovely appearance and I felt much calmer, albeit absolutely shattered. I know my new retirement lifestyle is supposed to be relaxing but to be honest I can't recall a moment of impending doom like that in any of my last few jobs! I've decided I'm not that keen on night sailing so unless someone can convince me otherwise I'm staying a bit more in my comfort zone for the foreseeable future. 

The rest of our 30 hour sail consisted of Greg and I taking it in turns to have a nap! I felt very privileged because every time I was on watch (OMG that means in charge of the boat on my own) I saw pods of dolphins. I became quite adept at recognising where they were and after loads of attempts to take photos I made a video. Now you have to be patient. I started filming where I noticed a bit of underwater agitation like a bag of ferrets and my spot paid off but you will have to keep watching to get to the exciting bit. Don't stop..watch to the end. David Attenborough has a team with great editing equipment which I don't know how to do but if any of you know how to edit iPhone videos please let me know and I will reduce the anticipatory time. Its not just a video of the sea honestly!

We were so pleased to spot land as we approached the towering cliffs of Laredo in northern Spain this evening after our 30 plus hours epic journey. We are anchored safely but doubt we will be partying tonight. An early night in safe harbour is just what we need.

Land-ho! Approaching Spain.....

La Rochelle

Apologies that I haven't posted anything on this blog for a while, but we have been having huge problems with our internet connectivity. Before we left I bought a Wifi Bat wifi booster and a Redbox router hoping that these would allow us to connect to local wifi hotspots with ease, but I have until now been very disappointed. 

I have been here for a few days whilst Jan has been away visiting some friends and it has allowed me to get on top of some of the maintenance issues that have arisen. One of them has been the Redbox and I am very pleased to report that after a couple of very long telephone conversations with the very nice and patient people at MailaSail, all is good and we now have an internet connection.

We are currently in Port Minimes in La Rochelle and it is HUGE! Apparently it is the biggest marina on the Atlantic coast and having cycled round it quite a few times I can believe it.

At €55 per night Port Minimes is not only the biggest but also the most expensive marina we have stayed at - it's a shame their shower facilities aren't as top end as their prices.

La Rochelle is a great city, I would describe it as a combination of Brighton; Bristol and Amsterdam. The Vieux Port is a buzzy area with loads of bars and restaurants and sailing and yachting is clearly a key focus here.

I had been having problems with the watermaker and there are so many yachting-related businesses here that I decided that this was the place to get it fixed. Well thanks to the help of Guillaume from Uchimata  all is good and it is now functioning. 

I have also been able to replace the bucket I threw overboard from one of the several chandleries here and I bought a Spanish and Portuguese courtesy flags for the next stages of our journey. FYI, a Portuguese flag is 5 times the cost of a Spanish one because its so much more complicated!  

One thing that hasn't been great about La Rochelle is the prices. Every time i go to the supermarket it seems to cost €35 however little I buy and the bar prices are eye-watering. 

€7.70 for a beer!!

Anyway, Jan is back tomorrow and we are off to Spain, where hopefully it will be a little cheaper. Its going to be our longest passage so far, just over 200 miles - and will require an overnight sail. It can be a bit taxing sailing overnight with only two on board but the weather forecast looks reasonable and there aren't really any other options along this bit of the coast - there is a missile testing area which extends 45 miles offshore.