Arriving in La Coruna  - The Torre de Hercules, the oldest functioning lighthouse in the world

The first 3 nights following the Biscay trip were spent in La Coruna Marina and during this time, Michael went up the mast to carry out an inspection on the broken VHF ariel fitting.  As you can see from the picture below the aluminium fitting had just sheared in two and as you can imagine he was not best pleased that such a ‘robust’ fitting should have broken off in the first place.  Anyway, we are currently try to source a new VHF ariel and will probably end up getting one in Gibraltar.

Despite being able to get a Wi-Fi link, we had extreme difficulty in connecting to the internet and we eventually ended up getting a link from the nearby 5* hotel but it did cost us two G&T’s at 18 Euros….ouch, but it was worth it!!

Outside La Coruna Marina

We met several British boats whilst we were in La Coruna and all seemed to be cruising South, but strangely enough we’ve not bumped into them since.   We decided that 3 days was quite sufficient in the marina and decided to explore one of the closest Rias, the Ria de Ares (rias are inland bays, where you can usually find shelter from the weather), where we spent the next 3 days anchored and at last began to really chill out.  In fact we only got off the boat once to explore the local town, but this was mainly due to the fact that on one of the days we had very strong winds and it was too rough to venture out in the dinghy.

Learning to fish in the blustery anchorage in the Ria de Ares

We then sailed all of 5 miles to the Ria de Betanzos and anchored outside Sada marina for 1 night.  Quite a busy town with a good selection of shops and supermarkets and it also had 2 large chandlery stores (so you can imagine this was a most delightful sight for Michael).

Now feeling ready to move on and the weather looking settled, we headed 45 miles ‘round the corner’ to Ria de Camarinas, where it took us 3-4 times to anchor in weed! 

We noticed another Royal Southern yacht; Polar Bear 3, anchoring at the same time.  We made contact the next day with her owners, John and Jacci and we ended up spending several delightful days cruising in their company. 

I was a bit disappointed at not being able to find the restaurant recommended by our friends on Zipadedoda and ended up eating on board.

After a couple of nights in the Ria de Camarinas, we moved on towards the notorious Cape Finisterre.  In fact it was very benign the day when we went round it and had a fabulous sail into Finisterre itself.  We anchored outside Finisterre town, but it became quite untenable so, we headed off across to another nearby bay (Sardineiro) and anchored just off a fabulous beach.  This was a great place to BBQ, so we took dinghies ashore and had a great BBQ of freshly caught mackerel (thanks to Jackie) and my usual chicken wraps with roasted veggies – yum.  

BBQ in Finisterre / Sardineiro with Jacci from Polar Bear

Michael and John 'cooling' BBQ coals - Cape Finisterre in background

As we are now in ‘Mosquito’ country, we try to be very careful about being bitten, but I think I was a bit paranoid last night when I woke up hearing a buzzing noise.  My immediate reaction was to wake up Michael and on seeing the ‘mossy’ I told him to get up and put his glasses on to kill it.  As you can imagine he was rather bewildered by all this activity, but after getting rid of the ‘mossy’ we ended up laughing about how funny the situation must have looked . 

The following day we moved round to Ria de Muros, one of most scenic and least spoilt of all the rias and again it took us nearly an hour and 7 attempts to anchor in very hard mud outside Muros.  However it was worth the effort to get it right as another yacht dragged and eventually had to move on. We moved across the 10 mile bay to Portosin where after an initial night at anchor went into the Marina.   As usual, a very busy day, with laundry, boat cleaning chores etc.  As it was Michael’s Birthday the next day, we decided to have a meal in the Club Nautico.  Pimms on Nimue with the crew of Polar Bear and a great meal to follow.