Lessons learnt from our trip from the UK to Spain in 2012

We set sail at dawn from the Hamble on the 26^th May 2012, heading for Dartmouth.

Perfect wind conditions for us, but it was here we learnt our first lesson… local knowledge of the waters is helpful… having spent 3 hours  seemingly going nowhere, fighting the currents off Portland Bill, some helpful chappie in Dartmouth told me you either stay inshore or go along way off shore, never in the middle!

Dartmouth, for those of you who have not been there, is well worth a visit. It is a quintessential  period town on the coast, wonderful old streets and buildings, fabulous  pubs and great English fry-ups,  which saw us well stocked up for Day 2, the short hop to Plymouth, or what was meant to be a short hop!

Here in comes lesson no 2. We checked the fuel gauge before departing Dartmouth, ¼  of a  tank left, 30 miles with good winds in the early part of the day,  no problems, we decided to fill up in Plymouth.

No thought was given as to how trust worthy the fuel gauge was. 2 hours into the journey, sea fog rolled in, winds picked up and apart from the nerve racking experience of not being able to see beyond your bow, everywhere so silent you could hear a pin drop,  the need to adorn yourself with a fog horn  and keep a watchful eye on the radar, things were going swimmingly!.

However as the fog cleared, the wind dropped, and the need for the engine came about if we were going to make good time. An hour later, log time and an hour was all it took for that little needle on the fuel gauge to drop from ¼ to red, with  12 miles still to go. No worries, there was some wind at that point and we were, afterall, in a sailing boat!!I  well if you never thought you could be becalmed in the English Channel,  trust me you can. Finally, doing less than a knot over ground, daylight soon started to run out, still 6 miles from Plymouth and too scared to completely run the engine dry of fuel  we, somewhat embarrassingly, sort the services of the good old RNLI.

Stranded in Bigby Bay, a kind sailor picked up our distress call and gallantly said he was passing our way and could help, he made some flippant comment over the radar to watch our for a pirate ship! Little did we know he was serious. 20 minutes later, a huge galleon which could have starred in the Pirates of the Caribbean came into view.

Just as we were thinking about quite how we were going to get a 10 litre drum of fuel of his ship to our little boat, the RNLI thankfully arrived. All street cred then went out the window as we were safely towed to the fuel berth in Plymouth at 10.30pm.

We stayed in Plymouth for a couple of days, ironing out the few problems that had arisen to date and getting the rigging checked before embarking across the Bay of Biscay, which included  buying 2 10 litre tanks of diesel, to be on the safe side!

Crack of dawn on 30^th May, we left Plymouth to tackle the infamous Bay of Biscay, luckily 5 days ahead of the massive storms that hit the UK.

The trip across the Bay was reasonably uneventful aside from the fact that the winds were not with us all the way, and the other British weather elements did manage to keep us in our wet weather gear.

The trip across to Baiona totalled 767 miles and took just over 4 ½ days, during which time we saw many more dolphins than we did ships.

I have 2 particular memories however I would like to share, one for the laughter it invoked on board, the other the near heart attack! On one particularly grey day I was down below when David called me up with a small degree of panic in his voice. He pointed to the radar and said “we are just about to collide with what looked like a giant squid!!!”. Not knowing what it was, we changed course,   the binoculars came out  to search for  anything in the water, nothing, “the squid” just kept heading towards us. We cut the engine and went very quiet indeed as we braced ourselves for impact. We then got very very wet as the heavens opened. Lesson no 3, radar picks up the impact of heavy rain on the water’s surface!!

Now the heart attack. Due to the weather conditions we reached the extremely busy shipping lanes off Finistere a little later than anticipated, as in the middle of the night, a no moon night at that! And we had to cross them to get into Baiona. Even with the benefit of AIS I can tell you that trusting your judgement, your eyesight and your knowledge of lights is a really tough thing to do when you have some seriously long tankers bearing down on you at the rate of 20-30 knots. However it wasn’t the tankers that got me, they were actually very well behaved… we were under sail you see, so had right of way. It was a massive block of flats, aka a cruise liner, fully decked with lights, white lights, coloured lights, party lights all lights designed, as far as I could tell, to stop you seeing their navigation lights and determining whether they are in fact turning to avoid you….  Nerves of steel, I think not, I was just about to turn the engines on, change course, anything to get out of the way, when Gordon shouted, I can see his port light, he is turning…. By god, did I need a stiff drink after that one!!

Day 11 from leaving the Hamble saw us safely into Baiona and without fail all of us had the earth moving around us for a few hours and it wasn’t the alcohol we consumed!! Baiona was a much prettier charismatic town than I envisaged, well worth a stop if you ever find yourself up that way.

2 days later, recharged and restocked with provisions, including fuel, we headed south to North Portugal, stopping off at Viana de Castello, Aviero, Nazare & Cascais, learning to navigate rivers and tides of up to 8 knots, swing bridges and power cables along the way.

The most interesting stop until we got to Cascais was in fact Aviero.    

Aviero is some 12 miles upriver with a no of twists, turns & Forks and those powers cables I mentioned. I did all my tidal calculations and knew when we had to enter the mouth of the river to  clear the bar at the entrance, sail (well motor) up on the  flow and have at least ½ metre clearance  under the power cables, well that was if my calculations were correct. Anyway we had 6 hours roughly to get to that point and I can remember we were racing against time , time and a tanker which David and Gordon wanted to beat to the mouth of the river.  We were doing well, or so they thought, laughing and joking, congratulating themselves, until I checked the AIS and told them the tanker was in fact on anchor!

So there we were, racing up the river, feeling somewhat not entirely under control as we were being carried forward by an 8 knot tide, when those lovely power cables came into view. All of a sudden my faith in my calculations dissipated and my crew watched me go a pale shade of grey. ½ metres distance, looking upwards, looks more like an inch trust me… but an inch was all we needed and we cleared them safely.

However my nice pale shade of grey was soon matched by that of my crew´s, when we finally docked in what appeared to be the most god forsaken place in Portugal. They just looked at me with “where the hell have you brought us” written all over their faces. Aviero is however said to be a mini Venice in Portugal. As quaint a place as it was, mini was an understatement, the total no of canals being 2. Still it was enough to be crammed with gondolas offering to take tourists for a ride. Again a nice place to stop for a night, if you are ever in that neck of the woods.

Next stop was Nazare for one night and then onto Cascais. On route the weather turned a little warmer, the winds a little lighter, pushing us along, so we thought it would be the perfect time to fly the asymmetrical spinnaker. Carol & Gordon had not seen it as yet. So, having spent 30 minutes or so setting it, we finally sat back to watch her fill and admire the colours, for all of 5 minutes as all of a sudden she came tumbling down into the water, all of us immediately scrambling to our feet, up to the bow to drag it out of the water before it snagged on the keel, rudder, prop, take your pick!!. Lesson  no 4, don’t trust the knots the professional riggers use… Fortunately  no harm done, we got the spinnaker safely back in its bag, if more than a little wet and crumpled! We then goose winged for the rest of the journey into Cascais.  Explain Goosewinging and Preventer

Cascais which is one of my favourite places in Portugal and well worth a few days of your time. It is very pretty, the people friendly, lots to see, fabulous marina and a short train ride away from Lisbon & Sintra, if you fancy it!

It was here that unfortunately we lost Carol and Gordon as sea sickness got the better of Carol, leaving David and I to do the rest of the journey by ourselves.

Day 21 was the first day of just the 2 of us and it was a brilliant day, with a F6 northerly enabling us to once again goose wing down the coast, arriving safely in Sines at around 6.30, thankfully I might add to a nice welcoming party to assist us with the lines ashore etc. We spent 2 nights in Sines, which is a tiny fishing village and took in Lesson no 5, always moor bow to a fishing dock, or not as the case may be. It took some time for the smell of fish to dissipate, however all was forgiven when we were directed to a tiny local restaurant in the back streets that could quite frankly have been someone´s front living room. It was absolutely packed, but they managed to clear some space for us and promptly served us with the one dish of the house, fish stew… and I must say it was the best fish stew I have ever eaten. Worth a trip back there just for that!

Day 23 –  Off to Lagos. This leg was some 88 NM round the southern tip of Portugal, and was the first of a few times we wished there was more than 2 of us on board!! Whilst we knew the winds would pick up once we rounded the corner and reefed our sailings in preparation, we didn’t expect them to go from a nice leisurely F3 to a F7 quicker than we could shake a dice. The auto helm couldn’t hold the boat and no could we and so found ourselves, whilst trying to reef 2 sails simultaneously going round in circles in the midst of a lobster pot field!!

Lagos is another town, well worth a visit, lovely marina, very quaint old town and very friendly people.

We stopped here for 2 nights to give us a day to explore, before heading off to Villa real de Santo Antonio, up the river of Rio Guardiana. Mooring alongside, the weather finally turned warm enough to set the table  up in the cockpit, eat dinner and drown a bottle of wine, whilst watching the sun go down in a wonderfully dramatic sunset!.

Day 26  we set sail for Spain, stopping briefly in Mazagon and then onto Cadiz, comfortable F4´s along the way.

For those of you who have never been to Cadiz, you must go. It is a beautiful town, with very different quarters, some oldie woldy, a little run down and some with beautiful architecture, overall lots of windy narrow streets to get lost in, cafes, bars, restaurants galore!.

We stayed there exploring for 2 days before then setting off for Gibraltar.

We left Cadiz at 9.30 in the morning riding the tide most of the way with a westerly force 3-5 behind us. We absolutely flew though the straights with wind and tide behind us pushing us along at a speed of 10.7 knots over ground, first on a goosewing starboard tack, broad reaching around Tarifa and then back on a goosewing port tack. We flew into the Bay of Gib, sails spread, preventer on until we were surrounded by tankers on the move or at anchor and totally lost our nerve, ending the goosewinging for that day.

Day 30, we headed for Puerto Banus and for the first time the weather was warm enough to don a bikini, well for me at least!! Arriving in Port we again wished we had more crew as we made our first attempt to moor stern too! A drink was definitely needed after that!

The rest of the trip went smoothly and uneventfully, the further into the Med we got, the warmer it got, and the less wind there was. Here we learnt the art of motor sailing!!  Along the way we stopped at Benalmadena, Marina del Este near Nerja, Aguadulce, San Jose and then home here to Garrucha. All of the places were very different, but the nicest, if you venture down that way, was Marina del Este.

San Jose, lesson no 6, katabatic winds (which come down off the hills at a serious rate of knots),  found us mooring in the tiniest port we had been into in a force 5 gusting 6… again stern too, yet another drink was consumed!

Day 35, our home run. Having sorted out the spinnaker whilst at Aguadulce, we were determined to arrive in Garrucha in some style!  Out came the Spinnaker again as we cruised our way past Mojacar, or attempted to…Now I know that max wind speeds for a spinnaker is around 15 knots, what I also learned that day was you need at least 5 knots to fly it in the first place.  Whilst we did actually manage to get her flying in a force 1, 1/2  knot over ground meant that we would be arriving in Garrucha the following day, so sense prevailed and we dispensed with the spinnaker, finally touching down in Garrucha where we met the lovely Domingo who has been looking after us there ever since!

In total, we covered 1781 NM, AND were at sea for 258 hours.