42:45.52N  009:03.99W

… well it is in these parts, anyway!  San Francisco is a small village at the western entrance of the Ria de Muros.  Focused on tourism, it seems more affluent than some of the fishing villages we have visited so far.  Graffiti is less prevalent and not every house over 50 years old has been abandoned.  We are anchored a hundred yards off the beach and despite some ever-present swell from the Atlantic, it’s pretty idyllic now that the sun has finally come out and the temperatures soared into the high twenties.  Julie swam to the beach and even I went for a dip: the sea is not warmed by the Gulf Stream down here so (like me) it needs a few days of persistent sun to warm the top layer sufficiently.  We gave the outboard the day off as the beach is so close and it responded by starting to leak fuel again.  I’m still convinced that we need to change the seals in the carburettor and  fuel pump, but I’m having difficulty persuading any experts… it looks as though there are some Mariner agents in the next Ria, so we’ll investigate later in the week.  That 10hp upgrade is creeping back onto the agenda…

A purse seiner at work.  He lays the red buoy with the start of the net, pays it out in a circle, then hauls the whole lot tight back the vessel.  The small white buoys hold the top edge of the net on the surface; there are weights on the bottom to hold it all open.  Looks easy in daylight on a calm day!

Julie went for some pampering today.  She nearly went to an emporium in Finisterre, but it did remind me of my barbers in Crownhill – rugby club photos on the wall and a slightly creepy lad sweeping up the cuttings… great value but probably not experts in the finer points of femininity.  The lady in San Francisco turned out to be a gem: the establishment was spotlessly clean with all the gismos and she is a hairdressing instructor no less.  They had a great gossip in Spanish and Julie came back very pleased with the investment (which was significantly better value than in Britain).  It turns out that the hairdresser’s husband is a clam fisherman.  He doesn’t have a boat, but belongs to a ‘cooperative’ of seventy men who have ‘jobs for life’ and who travel around this part of Galicia with their rakes in a highly organised business, complete with hierarchy, security, transport, accommodation and a pretty punishing schedule, I should think.  I can’t imagine many young people in Britain following such a lifestyle…

Escapade at anchor off the Ensenada de San Francisco