¡Hola España!

The ‘stress sailing’ is over, and we’re past our first goal of La Coruña. Time to take it a little bit easier! Mañana mañana as the Spanish tend to say… hence, the delayed blog post!

We’ve finally had some extra time to spend on reviewing the past and looking into the future. So much has been seen and done - but there’s even more ahead, making us almost stressed! Future planning and cherry picking of places is still ‘work-in-progress’ but at least the log book is now up to date!

Here’s how we got from France to Vigo in Spain:

After Brest we made three more stops in France: Lorient, Les Sables d’Olonne and La Rochelle. Les Sables d’Olonne is a beautiful small fishing town with lots of restaurants, shops and a long sandy beach.

The waterfront of Les Sables d'Olonne.

La Rochelle is the yachting capital of Biscay. Both the old marina in the heart of the city and the new marina on the outskirts were huge, berthing one beautiful boat after another! The city was lively and full of action already in the beginning of June and must get really busy during the holiday season.

La Rochelle - the yachting capital of Biscay.

From La Rochelle we crossed straight over Biscay to west of Gijón. This took three days and two nights in the mild winds we had. Biscay treated us with calm weather, but some nasty waves, which could really be felt in the bottom of the stomach. Plenty of dolphins around again, and this time we have evidence, ha! Unfortunately the odd whale we saw was no caught on film…

Dolphins round one.

Dolphins round two.

Sunrise at Biscaya.

Tiredness won our ambition to reach La Coruña in one go, and we stopped for a night at Avilés just west of Gijon. Here we met some cool local fishermen, who gave us some nice tips for places to visit along the northern coastline. These became handy later on! Also, they advised us that our tuna fishing attempts were doomed to fail - the water was too cold for them due to the extraordinarily cold spring!

Who needs real maps anyway! This is the local style!

Our second go towards La Coruña wasn’t a success either. First we had to motor because of no winds and then we reached the frontline of a storm arriving from the west. We didn’t want to risk it, so at 5am we came in to the marina in Viveiro for shelter.

Viveiro is a cute little town with a small beach, beautiful lush nature and most importantly, an excellent food store!

Viveiro is protected by the highest wall we've seen so far

Cool old cannon on the Viveiro beach!

From Viveiro to La Coruña we made it with one day sail and finally is was time to open the celebration Coroñas (or Coronitas as they call it here) for reaching the midway goal! Felt really good!

Town view from the main beach of La Coruña

The main beach of La Coruña

We managed to time our visit in La Coruña with The Noche de San Juan fiesta, celebrated on June 23rd. The main beach was crowded with people, lighting fires made out of old furniture and pieces of wood. The deal was to jump over a fire to get rid of ‘the witches inside you’. We followed the locals!

The beach was lit by hundreds of fires!

From La Coruña we sailed down the coast to Pedras Negras. The winds were at 30 knots in gusts so we got a really good ride – new speed record of 17.9 knots surfing down a wave!

Yesterday we continued towards Vigo and anchored just around the corner to the Islas Cies, a natural reserve. We had planned to go there of course, but thanks to no advance research, we didn’t have the necessary permits applied.

Islas Cies at sunset!