Saturday 4^th June, 2016

Off Cabo Corrubedo, Galicia, Spain 42 34.2N 0 9 07.8W

Today's Blog by Richard  (Time zone: BST+1; UTC +2)

Superstitious members of the crew were pleased to finally depart the Coast of Death yesterday morning as we waved goodbye to Finisterre. We had a southerly wind of 12-15 knots and, with Serendipity perfectly balanced, enjoyed a sublime sail to Muros, averaging 8-9 knots of boat speed. We anchored off a slipway in the town. Unfortunately, someone else did, too:

And we knew that the tide was still rising and this is how it looked a couple of hours later. We tried not to laugh too much:

After a light lunch, the crew settled into what is becoming an habitual activity – an afternoon nap - but we managed to summon up enough energy to go into Muros in the early evening. The car had gone from the slipway but not driven under its own steam, we are sure.

Muros is a pretty town with a lively town square and some nice architecture.

Whilst the crew was settling into a well-earned beer, David popped across to another yacht to chat to a fellow OCC member and came back with a recommended restaurant for dinner. We followed the recommendation and dined on some excellent grilled fish. It had been a fantastic day, overall.

Now, it doesn’t pay to be smug and we should have been more sympathetic to the car owner earlier in the day. We should also have recognised that a tide which rises will surely fall again. This is what we saw on emerging from the restaurant and, yes, it is Serendipity’s new tender:

The tide had fallen considerably more than our estimate. Rather than drag the tender along the rocks, we decided that we would simply have to wait for the tide to rise – a couple of hours hence. Conversation must have been getting quite desperate as we began to challenge each other with tongue-twisters such as “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers” and “red lorry, yellow lorry”. Ted didn’t know any so he made up his own: “Dickhead dropped the dinghy on the dock”! Ted is Australian.

The sorry tale ended thus, with no damage done:

Today, we have no wind and we are motoring towards Ria Arousa. I will leave someone else to blog about that.