43:43.00N

007:36.00W

Rain, ground-level cloud, more rain, big waves, force 7 winds. Oh yes, we've had it all. And all of it happened yesterday. Our supposed 28 mile 'hop' from Ribadeo to Viveiro became a 45-mile slog to windward, battered by rain and with no sight of the coast until about 6pm, when the enormous aluminium works at Puerto Alumina Espanola loomed out of the cloud. We smelt it before we saw it. In fact, you generally do smell the coast quite vividly before you arrive. We encountered fig trees, pine trees and cows before we could actually see where we were through the cloud.

We're now moored up alongside a Danish boat we know from Santander and Gijon. We put in a somewhat unimpressive mooring manoeuvre when we arrived after sunset last night, and were greeted by an invitation for supper. Peeling off our wet oilskins and jumping onboard a warm, dry boat seemed like an excellent idea, so we were treated to tapas on their Southerly 35. Although barely a foot longer than Sumer Song, she's probably an extra 6 foot wider - or so it seemed. Stein and Rosemary were full of tales of Northern Spain and sailing in the Baltic, and have simply sold their flat in Copenhagen to focus on sailing for as much of the year as possible. What an idea...

Yesterday's completely unforecast force 6-7 winds aside, the current run of fine weather is expected to end tomorrow, when the wind will get up to 20 or 25 knots and the seas will pile up into a big swell. We need to decide whather we hunker down here, or try to get a little further round the corner towards La Coruna.

On the plus side we have a monster macker-tuna in the fridge to eat, after another successful fish hunting exploit yesterday. No apparent shortage of fish in the sea here...