Ribadeo

Pelican
Darryl and Anne Saxton
Sat 17 Oct 2009 14:02
Well now I understand what everyone is talking about when they say that Biscay is bad!!!
 
We left Bilbao on Wednesday morning, planning to sail non stop to La Coruna. We sailed overnight Wednesday night, but by Thursday morning it was clear that we would have to stop. The winds were OK - force 4 to 5, but the swells continued to be a big problem for us. Darryl is the only one on board with enough experience to take the helm in those conditions, so he was on the wheel pretty much all the time, only managing to grab a couple of hours sleep. We decided that we would stop in Gijon on Thursday night to give Darryl some rest.
 
Gijon is quite a bustling town and definitely worth a visit if we had more time. Not many people speak English and our Spanish is decidedly dodgy to say the least. Still, we decided to go out for dinner that evening as a morale boost and somehow ended up in a local Catalonian eatery. We obviously don't speak any Catalonian and the restaurant staff only spoke Catalonian and very little Spanish, so the Spanish dictionary and phrasebook wasn't much help. However, by drawing pictures on the waiters notepad and making various fish type hand gestures we somehow managed to order what turned out to be a fabulous meal. Although I'd still love to know what sort of fish 'Chopa' actually is!
 
We left Gijon on Friday morning and from the outset Darryl had to take the wheel. According to the weather forecasts the wind was supposed to be force 4 to 5, with swells of 8 feet. By mid afternoon we were at the top end of a force 6 and when I looked on the altimeter it said 35 feet!!.... that was the height of the boat above sea level sat on top of a rather large wave!!!  We decided it would be prudent to stop again that night and the closest port that could accommodate us was Ribadeo. Unfortunately by the time we got to Ribadeo we sustained a bit of damage. Nothing that can't be fixed, but we will have to stay here for a couple of days until it is all sorted. Although that's probably not a bad thing as hopefully the weather will improve a bit by then.
 
Still, the end of Biscay is in sight (only 50 miles to go) and all three of us will be very relieved once we are out of the Bay of Biscay!