Position:  42:25.71N 08:42.12W

Combarro, Spain

After a peaceful nights sleep anchored off Muros Town, we got up with the intention of sailing 2 rias down (40M) to Ria de Pontevedra, to a place called Combarro.  Unfortunately it was obviously our day for anchoring lessons, as the anchor snagged when there was still 30m of chain over the side!  By lots of snubbing and manual winching, we eventually got the anchor to within a metre of the surface, to find we had brought up a huge rusty fishermans anchor on a cable.  It was well twisted round our anchor, so it took a little thinking and common sense from Sarah and some huffing and puffing from Ollie to clear ourselves!  It took an hour but to be honest it was a useful lesson in how to extricate ourselves, and there was no wind, waves or current so we put it down to experience.  Still not sure a trip line would have helped though – suspect it would have been one more thing to have disentangled…

Freeing our anchor off Muros

We had a mixed sail round to Ria de Pontevedra.  So far, the winds have been somewhat variable but today they were NWly, although only 12-14kts, which with the swell, doesn’t make for the best sailing, and the Iron Topsail was used to help push us along.  However, as always seems to happen if we need cheering/waking up when sailing in Spain, we were joined by some dolphins.  They always lift the mood of the whole boat no matter what is happening at the time.

Nutmeg definitely loves a reach and when we turned into the Ria and headed East, we had a cracking sail up this fairly built-up ria towards the top.  Combarro is supposed to be a lovely old fishing port with a lovely old town.  When we arrived we found that they had built a marina in the last six months, so it wasn’t quite as lovely and old as it was supposed to be!

We anchored in a few metres of water nearby the Dutch boats, who had arrived the day before.  It may be worth noting that these days there are other considerations on anchoring than simply shelter, clear swinging room, etc.  One of the key considerations now is wireless connectivity!  Those with decent external aerials have picked up free wireless wherever they have been whilst the less technically fortunate amongst us have struggled somewhat.

However to take things a step further (dunno why I hadn’t thought of this before) one of the Dutch yachts (Duende, crewed by Broem and Vivienne) set up his laptop as wireless server and each boat can connect in and swap weather files, photos etc, as long as we are in range.  Clever hey?  So I posted our photos of Ria de Muros and downloaded a couple of videos from one of the other boats, all whilst sat at anchor.  This is the life.  And this is why it is important to anchor in the right place – close to the boat with the wireless server!

Duende off Combarro

Walrus off Combarro

Tyche off Combarro

We went ashore to have a look round and whilst there was a very beautiful old town it was a bit of a tourist trap – something we haven’t yet seen on this coast, thank God!

Combarro old town

Whilst in the town Jemima took it upon herself to have an almighty tantrum which I think (it’s always difficult to remember why these things start) was over her refusal to apologise for something she’d done.  She is very stubborn sometimes and there was a lot of noise which can’t have done the daily takings any good in the nearby shops as we cleared the street!

I think it is fair to say that we all felt in need of a break in Combarro.  Our Dutch friends, who up to now have always seemed to arrive and leave a day ahead of us, had sailed on, and we didn’t feel like staying here another night either, despite the anchorage being calm and peaceful.  It may sound strange to those at home but cruising a small boat is very intense at times and not really a non-stop holiday.  There is little time to chill out and relax or talk – the daily routine of jobs, planning, reading up on pilotage/next ports, school, cooking, cleaning, etc takes up almost all our time, together with the stress of worrying about longer passages, whether the weather/swell will be OK etc.  We haven’t even finished reading the newspapers that Mum brought out nearly 2 weeks ago. 

Jemima looking dark

Emilia and obligatory doll

What we needed was a few days on the beach – so that afternoon we lifted the anchor and set off for Islas Cies, some islands off the entrance to the next and final ria – Ria de Vigo.