After a cracking day sail yesterday we are now marginally further south albeit still north of Finisterre. You will or may have read from Annie’s tale of things medieval and so on in La Coruna but I can tell you the highlight was finding the most fantastic chandlery. It is an Aladdin’s Cave comparable to those amazing local hardware shops where they have everything you can think of and more but where you need to ask and be taken to some remote corner for all to be revealed. Wonderful, although sadly all we really needed was some additional line for the lazyjacks to accommodate an additional eye on each side of the sail cover that we had sewn in when in Padstow. I did get a wrench for removing oil filters and an additional floating key fob though.

Having accomplished everything we needed on Tuesday we set of yesterday into a forecast gentle north easterly for a 10 hour run down to Camarinas. Before long we were running before a steady force 6 with frequent gusts of 30kts. To make life more interesting there was a big sea running from the north east but also an Atlantic swell from the west so that every few waves they combined to give some interesting rolling not appreciated by the saucepans in the cupboard under the sink. Unlike two Dutch guys in their J109 who blasted down here under full sail with recorded gusts of 37kts we took a more leisurely approach and left the mainsail snuggly tucked up in its bag and let the genoa do all the work. Much more comfortable and avoids all the hassle of a pole and preventer and the worry of gybing or tacking downwind a la the J109.

When it comes to performance size counts. At least, unlike other aspects of life of course, it does with boats. Basically the longer you are the faster you go. You could see this clearly on the AIS yesterday where there were several boats all headed in the same direction and the longer ones were going faster than the shorter ones. But, there is the tale of the hare and the tortoise. We left Coruna with Polar Bear (UK and French plastic I think) which at 66ft couldn’t help going faster than us. However we just let fly the genoa and set about a real coffee in the wonderful Bodum drinking cafatieres and rolled along at 7kts. Polar Bear motored ahead and after six or seven miles were faffing around in circles and when we caught them up they were taking an age to hoist main and genoa before setting off downwind at a steady 10kts. I’d have been more impressed had it been 12 or 13! Another example was a 46ft yacht sailing at 8 or 9kts that steadily caught us up until we turned onto a fully downwind course. They then elected to tack downwind and fell far behind.

Annie was brilliant on this leg. Despite the rolling she managed to read her book and then retired for a nap after lunch. We then swapped and she manage a single handed gybe that involved furling the genoa (we have the inner forestay rigged with the staysail hanked to it because I thought that looked impressive on other cruising boats seen in previous years). Not bad - although she did allow the downwind tacking 46ft yacht to overtake us.

We are now in a tiny marina at Camarinas where for a change we are the largest boat. The cruising guide advises that shelter is not good in a strong north easterly. It is a strong north easterly of course but it doesn’t seem too bad. The main worry is that the finger pontoon we are tied to barely reaches half way down the boat so we’ll need to keep an eye on things. Had a wonderful paella in the club bar last night.