Fai Tira Blog Tuesday 02/09/09

Fai Tira in Spain at last 43:39.33N 8:03.90W

Well we have made it to Spain at last!!.  We haven’t arrived in the port we intended due to a number of circumstances I will go into later.  We were hoping to go to Camarinas on the NW coast of Spain around the corner from La Coruna. This would have been a good stopping off point to get us around the fabled Cape Finisterre.   

We had been at sea for 4 days and were coming to our 5^th night.  The wind had been mostly from the SW for the transit of Biscay.  This meant we were close hauled all of the time.  Whenever we could pinch the wind we would to get as far west as we could but our southerly course was heading us towards Santander.  Every time we put a tack in we were against heavy seas and our leeway was such that we were heading just north of west.  Psychologically this was a bad thing as we saw the miles to goal increasing on the GPS not decreasing.

Then we had some good luck the wind went around to the NW and we had 10 hours in the right direction.  Dawn rose today to see us with only 60 miles to go.  The wind direction was such that we could possibly make La Coruna.  We decided to make land there.  Then the wind picked up and increased to force 8 from the SW.  By this time we were only 20 miles from our new goal.  We reefed down to the second reef and decided to motor sail to help us point higher. 

We furled the Genoa and just had the stay sail up doing 6 knots towards a marina and a shower.  Only 4 hours to go were both drenched waves coming over the cockpit, we.  We then noticed the stay sail was detached where it meets the mast.  Bugger we need a safe haven.  We looked at the direction best to relieve pressure on the rig, luckily we were pointed straight at the fishing port of Cedeira.  We arrived here at 6.00 with both of us thoroughly knackered and wet through.  We dropped anchor and relaxed for a bit before we pulled the stay sail down.  What a trip!! Let’s hope we get fairer winds in the future. 

We will have to go to La Coruna to get a rigger to sort out the stay so will be off to there the day after tomorrow.

Anyhow we are safe and well and looking forward to a day doing maintenance on the boat,not!! 

TOLD YOU IT WAS AN ADVENTURE AND NOT A HOLIDAY.

Bye for now. 

Pete and John.