Monday 6^th June, 2016

Ria Aldan, Galicia, Spain 42 17.6N  9 51.1W

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

The weather over the last few days has been pleasant enough.  Bright blue skies, still air, hot sun with just enough cloud cover to prevent you from frying – but also preventing the sea breeze building in any meaningful way.  Therefore we have not had the chance to do much sailing since we left Muras.  The weather over the next few days is forecast to be more of the same – crucially,  no wind worthy of the name.  So we are doing our bit to support  the oil price above the  psychologically important  $50 barrier!

In the circumstances, morale has been good:

But with time on our hands we have been looking for something to do.  So after we had been suitably stimulated by a night at anchor  in Ria Arousa (sic) we decided to visit a Nudist Colony on Isla de Ons,  anchoring off for lunch and perhaps overnight. We sailed at 2-3 knots for as long as we could bear it but then the anticipation proved too much and we raised the iron topsail to motor there at 7+knots.

When it came to it, we couldn’t bring ourselves to go through with our plan.  It was not so much the embarrassment of five sexagenarians (well, OK Simon, nearly five) leering through binoculars at the spectacle on the beach as the fact that there was an onshore wind building  and the anchorage might have proved unsafe.  That did not deter some among our number from standing conspicuously on the side deck peering lasciviously at anything they could see …………… which was not much at all.  Chiz, Chiz.

We had spent the previous night anchored in A Pobra Do Caraminal, in Ria Arousa where, based upon a recommendation from another OCC member we had met in Muras (Peter Haden of Papageno ), we ate at a restaurant on a terrace overlooking the harbor with Serendipity in the distance.

Those dark structures are ‘viveros’, floating wooden platforms tethered to the seabed from which mussels are farmed.  They are moored all over these rias,  together in large fleets,  making navigation – particularly at night – something of a challenge.  Caraminal itself was a pretty town.

Yesterday, the town celebrated the a Christian Festival of  Corpus Christi with loud firework maroons exploding all around the shores of  the rias a we glided gently out of the ria, around the  viveros, making the sail quite eerie.

Earlier, we had seen children making preparations for the night’s procession and party.

These were all designed and filled by hand. We didn’t speak enough Spanish to determine exactly what materials were used although the green appeared to be some kind of plant material.  There were 100’s and 100’s of metres of these carpets – devotion indeed.