April 16th - May 20th (Spain)
We flew out to Asturias on 16th April, hired a car (the hire company tried to get us to upgrade to a seven seater Mercedes, but we said “no thanks, the smallest you have is fine by us” and finally settled on a Seat Mii) and really enjoyed the long drive down to Vigo through beautiful ountryside. By the time we arrived at the marina and sorted out the boat sufficiently to make it habitable it was fairly late, so after a quick meal it was off to bed.
As we had the hire car for three days we thought that we would stock up the boat with the all the heavy essentials – water, beer and wine and had a few trips up to the local Alcampo, a huge hypermarket in Vigo which sells virtually everything you could possibly want and a few you don’t. We had hoped that we’d have one day sightseeing but simply ran out of time before the car was due to be handed back.
The next couple of weeks were spent carrying out the seemingly never ending list of jobs required before launch, but all made much easier because of the warm weather. We even started adopting the Spanish siesta because of the heat. Our original launch date was 29th April, but obviously this is Spain and things don’t move quite so quickly as in UK and for a variety of reasons we finally made it into the water on 7th May. A further week was spent in the marina sorting out the rigging and sails etc. By this time quite a few other British boats had been launched and we had some fun evenings, which involved the odd alcoholic beverage. Donald Dorn-Lopez from the US was kind enough to ferry us back to Alcampo for a second load of vital supplies (mostly liquid). Donald was starting a fairly major overhaul of his boat Embla as he is thinking of taking part in the Blue Planet Odyssey in 2014. He removed a massive pile of gear from Embla to make room for new kit.
All this makes it sound as though we’ve spent the entire time working. Nothing could be further from the truth. We borrowed bikes from the marina most days and cycled either to Bouzas or into Vigo if we were feeling energetic and would have lunches sitting on the pavement watching the world go by or stop at a café for a mid-afternoon coffee. While in the marina, Mike would disappear for hours and when he finally returned would explain that he’d been helping someone with something or other – typical Mike, the font of all knowledge! We had some very amusing and lengthy conversations with the other “inmates” as they walked up and down the pontoon.
Finally the day dawned when we were to leave the marina. Naturally enough this was the day the weather decided to take a turn for the worse. We had a short but pleasant first sail under genoa across to Moaña which is about three miles across the Ria, and anchored in the bay. A short while later the wind got up and the rain started and continued most of the following day. The temperature dropped like a stone and the heating was on for much of the day. We didn’t bother getting off the boat, but carried on doing a few odd jobs to keep ourselves busy. A few days later we were joined in the bay by one of the boats from the marina, Amethyst, a Moody 44 owned by Geoff and Tricia Hodson.
