El Barquero

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We sailed from Viveiro to El Barquero, 10 miles away, on Sunday. What a perfect day!

Start with some pleasant sailing, the first one without shirt for a long time

Anchor l'Olonnois beside a desert beach

Dive to check that the anchor has a good grip on the sand. On-board again, do some fresh-water washing (spray water to use less of it)

Use “La ptite grosse”, our dinghy, to land on the beach at sunset

Enjoy some Pineau des Charentes brought by Marie's family in Viveiro, and which, surprisingly, survived to their stay :-)

Harvest some mussels (and almost a suicidal crab) for the dinner... and get back to the boat.

On Monday, we sailed from El Barquero to Cedeira. The grib files (weather forecasts) we downloaded predicted a westerly to south-westerly wind of 5 to 10 knots. On-site we measured 25 to 30 knots(!), and had to sail closed-hauled (fr: au pres) with one to two reefs in our main sail, and our stay-sail (fr: trinquette). The waves were correctly predicted though: 1-2m high. The deck was well rinced, but fortunately, the bottle of Pineau des Charentes survived the tacks.

We were also quite happy to see that the arch we built at the stern of l'Olonnois survived those tough conditions even if "La ptite grosse"and her 30kg were hanging to it. Thumbs up for Steinar's welds!

Future plans: we spend today and tomorrow in Cedeira, in order to have a look at the largest cliffs of continental Europe (more than 600m high). On Thursday the wind should be fair, and we'll set the course to La Coruna (fr: La Corogne).

Cheers everyone!

T.