Night Passages to Spain

Current (Interim) Location: 90 miles from Brest, 228 miles from A Coruña.

It's 2.08am on a very dark night. [Stops to take a look around the horizon]. I've just begun my graveyard two hour watch. We're making a course of 204° at 4.1 knots. It's slack water so no current with us and none against [amazingly the log that shows speed through the water is still working]. The iPad under the spray hood tells me we should arrive in Spain in 2 Days and 6 Hours. Gill and Linda are asleep. We have 15 knots of breeze from the SE, just as predicted. AIS shows a few fishing boats that we have already passed and a ship 8 miles off our port bow that I can't see yet.

But I'm jumping ahead of myself. After our arrival in Brest Marina and with Linda back in the UK sorting out her new U3A group and directing their builder we got stuck in to sourcing a new waterlock for the exhaust. The old one had developed a split along its seam, potentially catastrophic if it had split completely apart. I'd patched up the old one with plastic glue, sikaflex and gaffer tape but we didn't want to cross Biscay without a new one.

The offending exhaust waterlock showing glued, sikeflexed, duck taped repair.

Shaken to death, pre repair. No repaired picture - I was too pissed off!

Ordered Monday. "It will be here tomorrow". Or not. We hired bikes and cycled across town to pick it up. Not there. Cycle back. Return bikes. Chase up 300 euro deposit that the marina had not returned to our bank account. Maybe Wednesday. Or not.

We became tourists (or maybe we are all the time??) for a couple of days checking out what Brest has to offer. Its mainly a naval city but there's a bit of culture to catch up on too.

The excellent new meeting place space in Brest....

....including climbing wall.

The museum in the castle and the works of a famous figurehead carver.

At ease.

Meanwhile we are missing a lovely three day window of gentle easterly winds, just what we need to cross the notorious Biscay. Thursday comes. It's on the ferry!! You what? Anyway by now Linda's decided to rejoin us. We decide to get her to bring a waterlock on the plane with her on Friday. And she does. And of course the French one arrives then too. We told them to go away. [Ah, I can see the ship ahead now, a white pinprick of light at around 10 o'clock].

Next day we could see another depression coming through but it looked as though it will slide past us on its way to Northern Europe. We'll check tomorrow but an early start is on the cards. That evening we went out for a superb and very reasonably priced fish meal. I did enjoy my seafood platter.

Fantastic seafood platter.

So this morning we woke early and checked the forecast. Looks good. Let's go. Slipped our lines at 8am and off we went. It's been good. Lots of learnings. I've adjusted the Yankee (front sail) furler and it works much better, though still a bit stiff, we've reefed for the first time this season reasonably successfully, we've tried out various berths for sleeping and we're getting back in the rythym of things. The new crab line shaft brake snapped early on and has been replaced by some 2mm rope. Even this snapped once as we hit 8 knots but is holding firm now  Best of all, after initial problems Paul the wind steering has happily taken us along now for many hours saving electricity and saving us the 'er, er....,er, ...er' noise of the electrical autopilot. [The AIS machine (Automatic Identification System) now tells me the closest we'll get to this ship if we both carry on in our current speed and directions is 1.2 miles in 52 minutes. But it also tells me he's a fishing boat so he's likely to go in any direction. Better keep a watch out for him].

Still 15 knots of wind and we're still on a course of 204° but speed has dropped to 3.8 knots. Right, that's it for tonight. Time to do the hourly entry in the log.

Skipper and crew well wrapped up. It is only June after all.

Current (Interim) Location: 106 miles from Cedeira, Spain.

After a full day yesterday of sailing at 30° to the wind today we've had a full day of motoring directly into the wind. We've been out in the middle of the Bay of Biscay and only now at 1.07am do we start to feel land is not too far away. We've just seen our first ship for many hours on AIS but even then it was 18 miles away.

The first excitement of the day when we're still sailing was seeing Paul the newly installed wind steering moving around on his supports at the back of the boat. It turned out that the secondary vertical support brackets have play in them which was gradually getting worse. I spent an hour hanging off the back of the boat as we batted along at 6 knots trying to fix it. In the end Linda suggested we use  the bottle screw from a steering line to tension some  dyneema kite string. That's still in place and holding up well. We will need a better long term solution though.

Hanging off the back temporarily repairing "Paul".

Green rope and kite dyneema taking the strain off the bottom bracket.

The other big news on the day is "whales". No dolphins today but three separate sightings of whales in the deep waters in the middle of the bay, all spotted by Gilly. First a blow in the distance, then two small whales a couple of hundred metres off to starboard and finally another series of blows and a whale close by us. No idea what species but all very exciting.

It's warmer now. I still have full oilies on but for the first time I'm not cold. It's dark but the sky has finally cleared and there are stars above us. Very beautiful. We're motoring along at 6.3 knots and so far the new waterlock appears to be behaving - certainly there's still water coming out the back of the  boat. What else? The newly installed LED bow and stern lights are shining brightly, we've rerun the staysail sheets and continued to get to know Mehalah's idiosyncrasies. But mostly it's been a sociable day. Watches have overlapped, we've chatted, struggled with The Telegraph crossword and wondered what's been going on in the world. Food is good though we did have to feed the old and very mouldy cake to the dolphins (with requisite"feed the dolphins" song). And meanwhile we roll and pitch our way onward through the darkness towards Spain.

Housekeeping. Cleaning the windows

Skipper preparing mentally for landfall.

Current (Interim) Location: Cedeira anchorage, N Spanish coast near A Coruña.

We're in Spain!! Yippee!

Always a big moment. Down with the French flag, up with the Spanish.

The night continued and we motored through a lumpy sea with lightening flashing in the distance. Early in the morning to our great delight the wind veered to the east and we could sail again. Finally we spotted land and the coastline of Spain slid past to port. At the entrance to the Cedeira ria we negotiated a nasty little whirlpool before finally dropping anchor off the pretty, well protected town of Cedeira.


Current Location: Muros, Galicia

Next morning Linda packed and Gilly and I pumped up the dinghy on the foredeck and removed "Paul" from the transom. A bit of work required on him but the demountable process is basically sound. We dinghied ashore [Hello Spain] and walked into town. A low key, friendly place. Once Linda had ascertained her taxi pick up place for transfer out to A Coruna airport we went for a quick lunch. A working man's cafe, two courses for three of us came to €24, and very good food it was too. We left Linda at the roundabout waiting for her pickup from SunTransfers.com. Thanks Linda. It was great to have an extra member of crew. Despite the lack of adrenalin you saw on the Clipper Race I hope you enjoyed your time on Mehalah.

A quick lunch because we could see another short weather window to get us 'round the top left corner' of Spain. Anchor up, not fouled on the bottom, and back out through the narrows into the rolling ocean. Downwind at 4.5 knots in 10 knots of breeze. Lovely with just the Yankee up in sunny conditions. This is what it's all about.

Praying for wind.

The start of another night watch.

Until dusk came and wind dropped. We'd done 23 miles but another 75 odd to go. So it's engine on again through the night. And then the rain started, gently at first but still no wind. It got dark but soon we had dolphins playing alongside. And not just dolphins but phosphorescent dolphins. No matter how often you've seen them their appearance always makes you smile. Soon we had passed most of the Costa da Morte and headed for the "top left hand corner of Spain" or the fearful Cape Finistere. We counted off the lighthouses and soon we were approaching the corner. Now it's raining properly and there's a big fishing fleet to negotiate. We weave our way through them and finally it's a left turn into Ria de Muros. We anchor nicely in another big easy anchorage with four or five other boats. We sleep. Another night Passage completed.

Hauling nets after a long, wet night.

The following day we dinghied into the very attractive town of Muros and checked out the marina for somewhere to leave Mehalah during August. "Too expensive" Pedro said but try the travel lift down the road. He wrote down what we had to say to the guy and yes we can leave her there for a very reasonable price. Great, sorted.

And today (Thursday 27th June) we've finally started to get into a bit of cruising routine. Failed to find a launderette, purchased some cable ties and hose fittings and chilled in town. Then a few boat jobs including strengthening the dinghy engine launching system.

Strengthening the dinghy launching support.

Meanwhile Gilly was planning for the arrival of daughters Jen and Emma and partners next week and now we're off for a walk before a not to be missed Galician fish meal.