Ribadeo
Pelican
Darryl and Anne Saxton
Sat 17 Oct 2009 14:02
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Well now I understand what everyone is talking
about when they say that Biscay is bad!!!
We left Bilbao on Wednesday morning, planning to
sail non stop to La Coruna. We sailed overnight Wednesday night, but by Thursday
morning it was clear that we would have to stop. The winds were OK -
force 4 to 5, but the swells continued to be a big problem for us. Darryl
is the only one on board with enough experience to take the helm in those
conditions, so he was on the wheel pretty much all the time, only managing to
grab a couple of hours sleep. We decided that we would stop in Gijon on
Thursday night to give Darryl some rest.
Gijon is quite a bustling town and definitely worth
a visit if we had more time. Not many people speak English and our Spanish is
decidedly dodgy to say the least. Still, we decided to go out for dinner that
evening as a morale boost and somehow ended up in a local Catalonian eatery. We
obviously don't speak any Catalonian and the restaurant staff only spoke
Catalonian and very little Spanish, so the Spanish dictionary and
phrasebook wasn't much help. However, by drawing pictures on the
waiters notepad and making various fish type hand gestures we somehow managed to
order what turned out to be a fabulous meal. Although I'd still love to know
what sort of fish 'Chopa' actually is!
We left Gijon on Friday morning and from the
outset Darryl had to take the wheel. According to the weather forecasts the wind
was supposed to be force 4 to 5, with swells of 8 feet. By mid
afternoon we were at the top end of a force 6 and when I looked on the
altimeter it said 35 feet!!.... that was the height of the boat above
sea level sat on top of a rather large wave!!! We decided it would be
prudent to stop again that night and the closest port that could accommodate us
was Ribadeo. Unfortunately by the time we got to Ribadeo we sustained a bit of
damage. Nothing that can't be fixed, but we will have to stay here for a
couple of days until it is all sorted. Although that's probably not a bad
thing as hopefully the weather will improve a bit by then.
Still, the end of Biscay is in sight (only 50 miles
to go) and all three of us will be very relieved once we are out of the Bay
of Biscay!
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