43 23 5 N 08 28 5 W
From Fliss……….
Hello all we’ve just left La Coruna bound for Corme very little wind and travelling at around 3.2 knots. With motoring virtually all the way from the Hamble we’ve decided to try to sail as much as possible.
La Coruna I thought was a lovely city even though it does look from sea like an industrial port. The city is really cosmopolitan and has a real energy to it. Lovely little squares, churches & narrow little street’s bustling with café’s. It’s really clean & the locals have made a real effort with the promenades.
We did the coastal walk yesterday (around 3km). The beach is a lovely horseshoe bay and is ideal if you want to go surfing.
Torre de Hurcules Lighthouse - La Coruna
It’s really cheap to provision but the bars are on par with UK prices and much smaller measures.
Fantastic shops! It was really refreshing not to see British Home Stores, Woolworth’s & all of the usual fodder to get at home.
The Spanish love to dress up and you can spot the foreigners a mile off as “We” have the standard dress code, shorts & t-shirts.
I love the café culture and it’s great to just people watch sadly I didn’t do any retail therapy as Pete gets fed up trawling around shops.
Last night we decided to promenade so I made a concerted effort to dress up so I donned my best dress and sandals and off we went. We wondered around the back streets and then ended up a little bar. Pete had a beer and I ordered a glass of white wine, when it arrived it was tiny. They nice Spanish lady gave us some Tapas which consisted of mussels in a tomato’ish sauce and rollmop herrings thinking it was complimentary we felt obliged to eat them. Pete took one look at my face and did the gentlemanly thing and finished them off. We did have to pay for them by the way.
So good-bye La Coruna and “Hola” Corme.
From Pete………
Well, I think Fliss has summed it up. We went to the fuel dock to fill the tank but the man there would only give us 100 Euros-worth. I couldn’t get the gist of why he wouldn’t allow us to fill the tank so we will have to top it up when we get to Bayona.
Today is a short hop of approximately 30 miles to Rias de Corme y Lage. (meaning Estuary of Corme and Lage). We will spend one night there and then move-on.
The wind has died (less than one knot of forward progress) so the engine has now gone back on again.
Making the Portuguese flag in preparation
Sunday 2nd July (Continued) Happy birthday Liz
We arrived in Corme at approximately 16:30 BST. The little bay enclosed by a harbour wall was quite quaint and we anchored alone except for a Frenchman. After curry for dinner, we blew-up the dinghy and Fliss rowed us ashore. The village is reminiscent of a Siberian industrial town without the industry. Grey apartment blocks most of which appeared as empty as the streets. It did not take long to decide that there was nothing of interest so we rowed across the bay to a soft sandy beach where we rowed ashore backwards trying to gauge the gap between the waves…..we did get a bit wet!
We sat on the beach with a beer (Fliss had a glass of wine) whilst we watched the swell crash on the shore and wondered how we were going to re-launch the dinghy without a real soaking. Luckily, when the time came we picked a calm moment and rowed like hell to get into the deeper water.
The surrounding rocks are granite and the sand is soft and composed of silvery slithers. I was covered in spangly stuff that would make a teenage girl proud and it is difficult to remove.
Monday 3rd July – Happy birthday Ashliegh
Fliss prepared the boat, raised anchor and motored out of Corme. We leave the engine cooling seacock open and check that we are getting a good flow of water occasionally, but not necessarily the moment we set-off. Just outside the harbour wall, I noticed a different pitch from the exhaust noise and saw steam emanating from the exhaust…..no water coming out. So the engine went off and we bobbed in the calm (no wind and no tide). It took twenty minutes of poking with a long kitchen knife and a fork to pull the weed out that clogged the inlet. I had the seacock fully open and the top off the strainer but no water was coming out. Eventually, after removing clogs of weed, we got a water spout bursting out of the inlet and we put everything back together and set off.
The wind picked-up, dead ahead and we tacked through the sunny but very hazy day to Ria de Camarinas (43 degrees 08 minutes North, 9 degrees 11 minutes West). Just two miles from our destination, the wind died to almost nothing and we were managing 1 knot plus a bit of tide so we chose the quiet time to use the pre-prepared solar shower and clean-up.
Camarinas is a nice little town, it has a small marina, a harbour and is surrounded by hills of rolling pine trees (and wind farms……the whole coast is littered with wind farms). Very pleasant. The Norwegians and French and Swedish are in the marina and the four Brits are on the cheap anchored behind the breakwater. Cold meats, eggs, bread and salad on the cockpit table tonight.
Fliss
Corme what a strange place it is. As Pete describe it, it wouldn’t be out of place in a Colditz style movie.
The guide book said that it was fiercely insular I couldn’t agree more, I’m sure that every one is related by 1st line blood…. You know what I mean!
I felt a little uncomfortable there as the teenagers must be bored silly and I suspected that if the opportunity to misbehave presented itself they would take it.
Maybe were being unkind but I wasn’t unhappy to say adios!
Lovely day today as we managed to sail and the sun shone.
Time to say goodnight as dinner & GT awaits.
Monday 3rd July (evening)
Nadezhda at anchor - Camarinas
There is an old double-ended Colvic with a Brit flag flying. It looks like budget cruising hell. There are 3 youngsters aboard so, when they pass-by in their inflatable at half a knot (old outboard), we wave them across and proceed to ply them with beer. I was hoping to get rid of my Carlsberg collection but they drank the San Miguel and Grolsh as well! They were two blokes and a girl. The single male ‘borrowed’ the boat from his dad who was too old for sailing and the three of them have quit work and are heading for the Med for an indeterminate time. The girl had never been to sea before and they regaled their antics and the amusement of the female being flung across the cabin with the entire contents of the lockers on top of her. Great bunch and very amusing evening.
Tuesday 4th July (Flikkas Birthday).
It doesn’t need to be said that we got up late. Fliss was a little worse for ware, I scrubbed the deck, fitted a catch on the loo door, checked the exhaust silencer for molten plastic (after our blocked sea-water inlet) and did some other odds and sods.
Otherwise….a lazy day with some re-provisioning for the next leg.
Wednesday 5th July
We set off for the Ria de Muros at 07:45 (BST). We had a good broad reach to start with and were stonking along at over 7 knots. Of course, the wind died and we were left with an Atlantic swell rocking us side-to-side and threatening to shake the living daylights out of the mainsail as it slammed this way then that. So we took the sails down and motored around Cap Finisterre.
Cap Finnisterre
Slowly the wind picked-up from dead astern so we pulled the Jib out and poled it out to stop it flogging and had a good run down to the entrance of the Ria. Once around the rocks at the entrance, we hoisted the main-sail and broad-reached at over eight knots to the little town of Muros.
Anchored here now, the wind is funnelling down between the hills and is stronger than we have had in weeks…..all in the right direction for going South so tomorrow might be a record-making passage.
Fliss
A great sail today especially the bit coming into Muros, being at the front of the boat you can really feel the strength.
Dinner tonight chicken cooked with bacon (the chicken is yellow, but not out of date) with roasted (very small) potatoes in garlic & rosemary with Spanish cabbage. Not sure if we’re going ashore as it’s blowing a good ‘un.
Looks quite pretty here with clear azure water close to the beach. People are swimming are they mad???
Tomorrow Ria de Arousa I’m really looking forward to that!
Muros at Night
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