Ria De Viveiro – Carino (26 Miles / 8 Hours)
First things first, check that the electrical shore power works, the main reason we had come into this marina was so I could check that it was all working fine. On plugging in the cable the same problem arose, I was overly pissed off to say the least, thinking of the money and the problems we would have to fix it, until we tried a few different shore side sockets and it eventually worked. Crisis averted….for now. The boat to our starboard side was a rustic looking thing which made us feel a lot more comfortable about the Tudor Rose, and as we started chatting to the owner, it transpired that he was from Bristol, just off Gloucester road. His name was Pete, and he was as skinny as a rake (Jealous) and had a dark leathery tanned skin (Not jealous), and he was sailing on his own, with various friends coming out to meet him to act as crew for parts of his journey, he had left from Bristol Marina on the 22nd June and had made his was down the same route we had, he was currently looking for a place to moor for the winter as he needed to return to the UK in October for work. I had been surprised by how many people we met who followed the Biscay around instead of the direct route, although I suppose we are slightly still in the Bay of Biscay so we should start meeting people who took the direct route soon. At the moment Pete had two crew members, Kate and her husband, also from Bristol who turned out to give as a lot of help and advice during our stay. It was certainly nice to meet some English people, especially from Bristol. The harbour was excellent, all English speaking, great service, except the guys BO, literally killed me while having to sit in a small confirmed office filling in the paperwork…..I though me and Holly needed showers after a while of using using mooring buoys with no facilities, but this guy took it to the next level. We also caught glimpse a few times of the legend that was the 81 year old, English, solo sailing, salty sea dog on the small wooden boat down the pontoon, you would spot him walking up the pontoon with his WALKING STICK, or mustering the courage to clamber onto his bike. He had sailed from Falmouth, god knows where he was off to, but I will be happy if I can control my bowels at 81, let alone sail solo across oceans….Fair play to the guy. We nipped off for showers to remove the carrot oil from the days bronzing, including scrumpy who was soaked in oil from clinging to us, much to his disgust and then we called it a night.
The following day we had planned to get up early to get underway, but on waking to the alarm, we saw the dark dull grey rainclouds, and rolled back to sleep….no need to get up, we literally have nothing to do!!! Once up we meandered around the small dull town and did the obvious supermackardo trip. On returning to the boat we did a small bit of boat husbandry and started chatting with Kate and her Husband (We never got a name), they were both from Bristol also so it carried on the social aspect of this stay quite nicely. Turns out he was disappointed when, on realising we were from Bristol, we must clearly know his catamaran he has been building for the last 20 year, with the curvy windows by the SS great Britain, he and it are famous…..on telling him we had no idea what he was on about he seemed crushed and insisted that we must be mistaken. We chatted for a few hours and as a boat designer he offered to tune our sails for us so we the boat could achieve its full potential. We kindly let him, unfortunately as we have found out every sail since, we go 2 knots slower in every direction! We have cursed him ever since meeting him. They did kindly offer to winch me up the mast as we had an old flag line caught round the top, so all was not lost, which was good otherwise Holly was going up on a much less safe expedition…… We said our good byes and then slipped out to the anchorage outside of the harbour entrance, and dropped anchor, we needed the free night, but once there we wish we had stayed in the marina for a few wines with the Bristolians. Early the next morning we set off after a long beach walk for scrump, and a giant shell collecting adventure for Holly! The wind was in our face again but we wanted to make our way round the headland to the nature reserve that is Ria De Cediera, unfortunately with the wind against Holly tacked over and over to make the best of the wind but 12 Miles and 5 hours in, we gave up and altered course towards Carino, a small fishing harbour that we could anchor in, luckily the wind gradually came starboard for the next 3 hours allowing us to slowly slip into Caniro to drop the anchor, so we had sailed the whole way to make the best of a bad day.
Carino – Ria De Cedeiro ( 17 miles / 3.5 Hours)
On anchoring we had tea and took scrumpy ashore. Im not going to drone on about this stop, as it really was a bus stop for the night. Bar 2 walks, failure to find a patisserie, and meeting Scrumpy’s 3rd bit of stuff in the form of another Jack Russel called Mereena, after his recent conquests, she was not what we had expected, she was a dumpy little thing who looked like she enjoyed a pie or two, but she did share the love or balls which must have been the attraction. I cheeky ice cream later we headed back to the boat to get our heads down for an early start.
I was up early on my own at 7 to start the journey finally to Ria De Cedeira, it seems like this place was being built up and up in our heads, and it was going to be beautiful, and like paradise…..with no wind I put the engine on and motored peacefully watching to day begin, the sea was calm and it wasn’t long before we were turning into the entrance. It did look lovely and we were looking forward to a nice break for a night or two for free. We dropped the anchor and immediately heckled by the english boat next to us in the bay…..we though we would enjoy this stop…..how wrong we were!
Boat Hobos 