A Swedish couple arrived in Ribadesella and tied up alongside the quay
next to us and we had an interesting couple of days chatting with them. They
have spent the last 5 years sailing and are on their way back to Sweden for a
winter of repairs before sailing off again. They have so much experience and it
was lovely to be able to pick their brains on what they had encountered.
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| A typical granary close to the caves. |
Sven was keen to see the local historic caves with some 30,000 year
old paintings and asked if we would like to join him. The cave entrance was
blocked by a landslip around 5000 years ago and the cave was rediscovered in
1968 by some pot-holers. Hence it has been remarkably well-preserved and visits
are restricted in both numbers and time as just people breathing changes the
atmosphere and can cause deterioration of the paintings. There was an excellent
museum alongside the entrance to the cave, and if anyone is likely to visit I
would recommend doing the museum first, as the whistle stop tour of the cave
with the narration in Spanish meant it was difficult to work out what we were
supposed to be looking at some of the time.
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| The sketch of the boat, including the new dinghy cover! |
Whilst I was finishing sewing the sun cover for the dinghy I noticed a
mother and son standing close by. The boy was sketching the boat and after a
couple of minutes he finished and I asked to see the sketch. It was a very good
outline drawing of the boat and in my very broken Spanish I complemented the
boy on his skill. A couple of hours later, the boy with both parents this time
returned and presented me with the sketch which he had taken away and added in
much of the detail. It was now instantly recognisable as Freya Frey and I was
very touched by the gesture. We invited them on board for a cuppa and
discovered that he is 12 years old and attends an art college. Maybe one day he
will become famous and the sketch will be worth a lot of money!? Not that we
would part with it anyway.
It was 4th June before we finally left, setting sail for 18
miles to Villaviciosa, a place I am still trying to get my tongue around how to
pronounce. We motored again as there was very little wind, our thoughts of sailing
along this coast appear to be misconstrued! There is not a lot apart from
scenery and birdlife, so just our sort of place. We found a deep part of the
channel albeit with a very fast current, but with our hefty anchor and plenty
of chain we weren’t going anywhere. It seemed strange to be at anchor again
after just over a week tied to a wall but lovely and peaceful. The top of the estuary
further up was covered in weed, some of which worked its way loose with each tide,
and we watched clumps of it drift past the boat on a regular basis. When it came to lift the anchor, it made a rather interesting sight:
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| There is an anchor in there somewhere!! |
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| We thought this made a lovely photo..our anchorage at low water. |
On our second day here we decided to take the boat as far as possible
upstream on the rising tide and made it to a huge cider bottling plant just
outside the town with the unpronounceable name. A pretty river with mountain
views, although no sign of snow now, I guess too late in the season for that on
the lower slopes. Having established that there really wasn’t anything else
around apart from one bar and a campsite we made plans to set sail for
somewhere that maybe had a shop – not a big ask, although I do try and keep the
boat well-provisioned, and fresh bread is always at the top of the shopping
list.
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| A very common sign of the times, a half built building left for years since the property bubble burst |
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| Horizons |
As we exited the river mouth I spotted another yacht – a rare sight on
this coast, pointed it out to John who said.. “It’s a cat(amaran)..., it’s a
Catalac... it’s British!... I think it is Horizons!” He picked up the radio...”Calling the Catalac Catamaran
off of Tazones... Is that you, Jeff?” We think Jeff must have jumped somewhat
at this as he hadn’t spotted us before John made the call. We know
the previous owners of the boat well (Bev and Mary), but had only met Jeff once
before at the TMA (Tamar Multihull Association) annual(ish) Paella gathering,
at which John cooks the food (last year for the second time at Bev and Mary’s
house). Small world stuff going on here!! Had we been 10 minutes earlier or later
we would have missed him. Anyway, we came alongside each other, had a quick
chat, took the obligatory photos of each other and discussed destinations. Jeff
was heading to Gijon to meet up with another English boat owner (Roy), whilst
we were heading for Aviles 34 miles away.
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| Some interesting rock formations on the entrance to Aviles |
The pilot book says it is possible to anchor at Aviles, but having
written off the first anchorage as too exposed, we headed further up river,
passing several places that looked suitable for anchoring before reaching the
pontoons just before the end of the navigable part of the river. We had
heard of ports that offered 2 nights free berthing, so I thought this would be
a good place to ask if this was one of them. It took the harbour guys an hour
or so to arrive with info and at the suggestion of 22 euros for the night. The
weather forecast for the following day was a little iffy, so the thought of
being caught out for 2 or more nights was something we wanted to avoid. “No
anchoring within the port is allowed” was the response to our first request and
statements starting with “but it says in the pilot book..” got us nowhere.
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| Our Spinnaker |
We did a quick tide/wind/distance check and decided we would head for
the next estuary instead, only about 6 miles further west. For the first time
this season we did a spinnaker run for the hour’s sail to San Esteban. For
non-boaty readers, these are the big, usually brightly-coloured, sails that
protrude from the front of sailing boats and are good to use with gentle tail
winds. Anyway it was fab to really sail for a change, albeit a short distance
and an hour later we were tying up against a wall (free of charge of course) in
this former coal exporting town. That is how most of the pilot books describe
it, just a “has-been”. The reality was yet another pretty port, surrounded by
mountain and sea views, with the most sheltered stretch of water yet. Good
move, leaving Aviles behind, although we would have liked to have explored the
old town.
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| The quayside at San Esteban, with the wall that encloses the anchorage |
There were 3 other yachts in the harbour, all French, 2 monohulls and
an enormous cat, the owners of the latter kindly took our lines. Over the next
couple of days we spent lots of time with Jean-Luc and Katia, swapping notes on
where we had been and where we were going. As always the men got onto
discussing technical stuff so Katia and I managed to extricate ourselves onto
whichever boat the men were not on to discuss things more interesting to women
folk. Our list of coincidences includes:
- 1. We are the same age. (If you don’t know I am not telling you)
- 2. We both have 22 year old daughters.
- 3. We both have 20 year old sons.
- 4. We are both accountants by trade.
- 5. Contrary to what we may have believed possible a few years ago, we are both now sailing around the coast of Northern Spain in catamarans.
- 6. We share the view that one can never drink too much tea!
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| This is a close up of the tree in the foreground in the previous picture - it had some curious birds on a nest in it which took quite a while to work out they were fake!! |
Needless to say we got on well, conversing mainly in French (thank you
again, Annie), meaning I now understand how John gets confused swapping between
languages. Whilst I only have a very small vocabulary of Spanish, the hello,
please and thank you had become automatic in Spanish, so reverting back to
French was rather complicated. They set off a couple of days later with hopes
on both sides of meeting up again soon.
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| John and Jean Luc deep in conversation overlooking the next bay |
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| Jean Luc and Katia leaving San Esteban |
We swapped to anchoring as the fenders rubbing against the wall were
taking off a layer of paint. On John’s recommendation Jeff arrived in San Esteban
a couple of days later, and joined us for a proper chat and an invitation to stop
for dinner. With the conversation going back to when we had met in the UK, and
the not so old email trail that had gone around inviting TMA members to a BBQ
as John was not available to cook the Paella, the conversation very quickly
brought up the question” who was/were in the wrong place – most of the TMA members
or the Paella Chef”?? And so we had our own Paella evening on board Freya Frey,
with the only other member in the locality very willingly attending!
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| San Esteban at night |
The following day on Jeff’s recommendation Roy arrived and anchored
close by. Whilst refuelling at Gijon that morning he had passed on the
recommendation for our anchorage to Rick who followed within the hour. So with
4 red ensigns anchored we felt obliged to get together that evening and had a
good old natter over a couple of bottles of wine on Roy’s boat. This was
followed by gatherings on each boat for teas/coffees over the next two days
swapping views on amongst other things “wifi” and of course the latest weather
forecasts etc., as we were all looking at moving on West.
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| Reasons to stay in port! |
On Saturday Jeff headed out in a mild westerly leaving the rest of us
behind waiting for the wind to change. Bright and early on Sunday 17 June we up
anchored and waved goodbye to Rick and Roy, who were also preparing to depart
in the now very gentle Easterly. We had Ribadeo in mind, as it was the next
place with guaranteed shelter, albeit a rather long haul of 47 miles. With a
favourable sea and wind we had the spinnaker up again and sailed all the way,
in the company of 3 French boats to the North, Rick out ahead after he whizzed
by us and Roy on our tail. I was NOT seasick at all on this run and it was nice
to be back to what I call “normal” sailing, being able to prepare meals on
route without either feeling nauseous or in risk of things toppling over in the
swell. Maybe I will have to rename “normal” sailing to “what it used to be like”
sailing!
We anchored for the night in a small inlet just beyond the commercial
port. Ribadeo is, as with all the others, a lovely estuary surrounded by
mountains etc and this time with a decent sized town with a Lidl!!!!! We went
into the Marina (alongside Roy) in the morning and asked if we could tie up for
a couple of hours to do some shopping and fill up with fuel when we got back.
This was warmly accepted by the marina staff and so we headed into town (after
setting off i-Tunes to download all the latest podcasts whilst we were out).
We haven’t found a Lidl since arriving in Spain and assuming the same low
prices apply here as in France were keen to stock up on favourites like part-baked
bread, almost impossible to find anywhere else, and if found, too expensive to
consider worth buying. Unfortunately we didn’t find the Lidl but we did find a
decent sized Galician-branded supermarket and bought rather more than was
practical on the bikes and so rolled back down (thankfully) the hill to the
boat fully laden – with the exception of the elusive part-baked bread. After
filling up with fuel the marina staff suggested that we may like to stay a while
and use the showers etc. Roy asked John for a lesson in Spanish pronunciation
and I played on the internet whilst I had the chance.
We then took the opportunity of the rising tide to explore up the
river to Vegadeo, where we found nothing of interest except the scenery on the
way there and back. We made the call to sail further west again the next day so
anchored up again and made preparation for a long sail of 47 miles to Santa
Marta de Ortiguiera. I made some vegetable soup and Spanish tortilla (potato
and onion omelette but nothing like what the English call Spanish omelette) so
that we would have some easy to eat journey food in case the sea was a bit
rough.
We snook back into the marina at around 5 in the morning and
downloaded the latest weather forecast, all looked good, a decent Easterly
along with an Easterly swell for a change. As we exited the estuary there was a
large choppy swell which threw the boat in all directions. We are used to river
exits being lumpy but this was worse than normal. We continued out in the hope
that it would soon settle down, which it did very slightly once we were able to
start heading West. After only half an hour I made the call that I couldn’t
cope with 10 hours of this kind of sea as I was already feeling rough. We
changed direction again to head in for the next estuary of Foz, and I went to
bed. John checked out the pilot book and decided that it would not be possible
to enter with the swell as it was, so reverted to the original course.
I spent the day feeling very ill and the only time I was out of bed I
was feeding the fish (more times than I thought possible). The sea state did settle a bit and John
started to really enjoy the sail, and we blasted along at between 6 and 7 knots
for the entire journey, a speed which will amaze some of our fellow cat-owning friends
who think we are far too heavy to do so. It was consolation to both of us that
the trip would be around 3 hours shorted than originally thought, and on the
entry to Ortigueira John deliberately slowed down so that we wouldn’t get there
too early for the rising tide. We passed
our French friends with the big cat at the entrance; they were just heading out
to Cediera. We made our way up to the innermost anchorage in the pilot book and
dropped the hook. John was snoring within seconds of his head hitting the
pillow, it had been a long haul to do singlehanded.
It was still a bit bumpy for me after the day I had had, so 3 hours
later when John had recovered we moved again and tied up alongside the old quay,
which was completely sheltered from the wind and swell. We went ashore, found
the (very nice) club nautico and popped in for a quick drink before heading
back for an early night.
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| Recovering from the long haul - a BBQ on deck in the sunshine |
Whilst we have been here we have got the bikes out for a further explore,
including to the old windmill above the town and has a 360 degree view. Yesterday
we arranged to meet Jean-Luc and Katia roughly halfway between our two
anchorages. After a string of misunderstandings we finally met up at a restaurant
and had a relaxing afternoon chatting about where we had been since San
Esteban. Prices here are so much cheaper than in France and we enjoyed the rare
luxury of a meal out, 3 courses, drinks and coffees included for 12 euros each.
John has lost a filling and has an appointment with the dentist here
next Tuesday, so we shall be tied up along the wall for a few more days yet.
