July 4th - July 28th
The weather continued to be really hot and instead of having to use the tent to keep the wind and rain out, we now were using it as an awning, to help keep us shaded. The wind normally picks up in the afternoons, so we started going out for sails then just to keep cool, and anchored in various bays overnight. One night we were sitting in the cockpit at 1:00 am and it was still 30° inside and out, so a bit too hot to sleep! Mike erected our new cockpit light to enable him to read. The insects loved the 15 blue LEDs and swarmed all over it, so he got out the electric bug zapper I’d given him for Christmas. It’s a great device and he must have killed thousands of the little beggars. We had our own personal fireworks display right there in the cockpit!
Mike started to take the swivel apart but could only get so far and when he e-mailed the manufacturers to find out how to proceed, he was told he needed special tools and it was too difficult to explain. It would have helped if they’d told him that when he first contacted them! The only option was to try to get some more grease into it and put everything back together to see if the sail would unfurl. We motored in Vilagarcia marina, where we spent the afternoon re-assembling the forestay and hoisting the genoa. Currently we are able to unfurl the sail, but who knows how long it will last before seizing again. When it does we’ll order a new one from France, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed it will last until the end of the season.
A few days later we motored up to the Ria de Muros. When we left it was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and the sky bright blue, but about ten minutes later we motored into pea soup fog, with visibility down to 200 metres. This lasted for about 26 miles and we had a couple of tense moments when we were navigating our way through off lying rocks. Just before we entered Muros bay the sun was back out in a cloudless sky. I had contacted Amethyst just as we entered the Ria, to see if they were still around and discovered they were about six miles north, heading back to Muros. Both boats anchored in the bay and we spent another couple of every enjoyable evenings in their company. They are heading back to Vigo and flying home for a month, so hopefully we’ll catch up with them again in September.
After we left Muros, we had some great sails and anchored in several bays further up the Ria. One particular night I awoke about 04:00 and noticed a bright red glow up in the hills above the anchorage. We presumed it was a forest fire and when we got up in the morning there were two seaplanes circling around us. They repeatedly skimmed the Ria to fill up with water and returned to dump it on the fire. The smoke had drifted quite a few miles and there was a strong smell of burning wood. We motored back down to Muros, as we wanted to go into the marina and the Marinero told us that there had been several fires nearby but they were all now under control.
The following day, which again was very grey and cool, we caught a bus into Noia and wandered around the old town where we had an excellent lunch. We also visited a bonsai exhibition in a courtyard of the town hall, which was exhibiting a variety of plants I would never have imagined would be bonsai.
Our next port of call was Finisterre, where we anchored in the bay for four nights. We visited a small fishery museum and as we were the only ones there, we had everything carefully explained to us in a mixture of Spanish and English. The caretaker was obviously very keen on his subject and it was really interesting to see the various techniques used. He was keen to pick up any Scottish fishing terms and wrote down any words we mentioned.
From Finisterre we motored up to Ria de Camariñas and anchored in a lovely secluded little bay with only one other boat. The following day we motored across the Ria and anchored off the marina in Camariñas as the wind was forecast to increase to 30 knots. This is another town we visited last year, spending a week in the marina, but didn’t get much of a chance to see it as it was when I was unable to walk because of my ankle (spider bite). Hopefully this time we’ll do a bit more exploring.
