Mouros to Baiona
Altea
Thu 1 Aug 2013 19:10
1 August 2013
We spent another day at Mouros, did a bit of maintenance and popped into town for lunch. I had a hair cut, embarrassingly arranged entirely by sign language, due to my total ignorance of Spanish. Fortunately the hairdresser got the idea.
It rained as we returned to the boat, so the planned trip to the tide-powered mill, one of few working examples, had to be cancelled. We put the dinghy back on the davits and the outboard on the rail and set off at dusk for Baiona. In retrospect it would have been better to get out of the bay in better light to dodge the lobster pots, but we followed our incoming track on the plotter and did not hit any as far as I am aware.
The seas were pretty bumpy on the way out but we put the sails up at 11 PM and took a port tack on the southerly wind to get some westerly miles in. The weather forecast was for the wind to swing to the west and the gamble paid off so that when the wind shifted at about 3:00 AM we could take a starboard tack and we had a good sail to Baiona, arriving at about 10:00 AM. We were not in any rush, as we wanted to negotiate the last few miles in daylight to avoid the fishing boats and pots.
The scenery was very impressive as we sailed into the bay, with the old castle on the westerly side and the rugged islands of Isles de Cies behind us. We anchored in about 6m to the east of the yacht club.
We used the dinghy to motor in and sneaked in to moor up to the yacht club pontoon under a stone bridge. We reckoned the tide was on the way out, so the 3 ft head room should be fine. We were all impressed with Baiona, and glad that our attempts to obtain a permit to visit the Islands had failed.
Ice cream on the prom, a visit to a replica of the Pinta, which was one of the ships in Christopher Columbus' fleet and which had returned to Baiona with news of the new world.
Large gin and tonics at the yacht club on the way back to the boat rounded off the day very nicely for Richard and L. We returned to eat a lovely meal of ham melon and cheese on board.