Its a Dogs Life!

Finally, my owners got some sunbathing in. Life is tough. That was until a racing yacht decided to come in real close. I barked at him to go away. I also did the same to the dolphins that kept coming to the boat to play. This is my boat, not their play thing. I am sure the more I bark the more come.

The trip started out a little bumpy, but quickly leveled out when we turned south down around Finisterre. It always seems calmer when the waves are coming from behind. Lots of other boats out making passages while the sea state was good.

We are anchored up off the town of Muros in the Ria de Muros. Again we are hit by the ‘lemming effect’. No sooner do we decide where we think it is best to anchor then other boats come into harbour and start anchoring all around us. There is a whole bay, but they have to anchor right beside, in front and behind us. They think we know more then they do.

I am waiting patiently for them to drop the dingy so I can go to shore. We will check the weather and probably stay an extra day to have a good look around. The next Ria sounds very interesting with some great history, so we will probably head there sooner then later.

The boat is running great and no break downs ect., ect., ect. yet. Fingers crossed. Just needed to work out the kinks before she was sea worthy!

I have really enjoyed La Coruna.  I have started collecting girl friends in every port.  The french bitches were a bit snobby, but the Spanish girls are more then willing to foul around.

 

My human’s have been a bore and seem to spend all their time either fixing the boat or trying to find parts.  They assure me the boat is ready to go.  Just in time as the winds are turning fair tomorrow to get moving again.

 

The Marina staff have been very helpful and go out of their way to assist you.  A.S.A.P. supplies, in the UK,  have to be commended for assisting my humans in designing a dual fuel filter system and a fuel cleaning system.  They also got the parts to Spain in less then 24 hours.

 

It was not all work.  They did finally leave me on the boat alone last night while they went out for tapas with some friends they made.  Rob and Elaine on ‘Raven’.  They have a page on Sail Blogs if you want to check their boat and adventures out.  They were sneaking a few on errands during the day, but they said the city really comes a light at night with whole families out on the streets until late sampling little snack plates and enjoying them selves.  It was all very civilized.

 

We are leaving tomorrow with the fair winds.  We will travel South West to, at least, Ria de corme y Lage.  If the sailing is good we might keep going through the night and round the point of Finisterre to Ria de Muros.  I will update you if we stop.  If you don’t hear from us, then we are continuing through the night.

 

Lets hope nothing else goes wrong…..we are over due for some good luck.

You are not going to believe it, but I will talk about that later. First thing is it is 80′ at 7 pm in the evening. This is great.

We got off to a late start leaving La Coruna. The alarm did not work, we still had to sort out the canopy and lines and we wanted to check the internet one last time for a response from the WiFi guy. I wanted a good walk too, as I knew I would not be leaving the boat for a few days. In the end we said goodbye to new friends around 11am. We told everyone that we were waiting for the winds to kick in, as it was dead calm in the morning.

The winds certainly kicked in. We were soon flying along, down wind, at 8 knots. Strangely we passed one boat that left before us. But with the wind comes the waves in this part of the world and it increasingly became a bumpy ride. We did have the joy of seeing dolphins again. We decided that we did not fancy a rolly night so we pulled into Ria de Corme y Lage and found a nice place to anchor at Corme at 5pm.

We are anchored up behind a big jetty that runs out into the Ria. There are rafts of hanging ropes (muscle beds) on our starboard (right) and the town with it’s sea wall on our port (left). In front is a lovely sandy beech. The town is rather plain, but does have terracota roofs, lots of palm trees and a church that seems to ring its bells into tunes every half hour. The hills around are toped with forest and modern wind generators.

The best thing of all is: You are not going to believe it, but nothing went wrong, broke or needed a quick fix. It must mean our luck is changing for the better. end:

Well we made it to La Coruna, but it was not an easy trip.

We should have know that luck was not with us that day when we pulled up a big net on our anchor.  My humans found that scissors were far more effective than a knife to cut it free.  They had to try and get it all aboard with out fouling the prop.  A hugh amount of net in the water did bag up rather small.

 

But we were silly enough not to hear the warning and headed out of the sheltered waters of the Ria and headed into some awful swell.  At least it was a ‘shortish’ run and we approached La Coruna with the famous view of the roman light house on the point.

As we entered the harbour we experienced engine trouble AGAIN.  This was NOT good as we were in a tight spot now for sailing.  But back to sailing we did.  Crossing back and forth.  With all those merchant ships we saw outside the harbour waiting to get iin.

We thought it best to give a pan pan(warning call) that we had reduced mobility.  Turns out they do not know what a pan pan is or, as we discovered later, a life boat service in this country., But we did get a response from the traffic control tower.

They were happy to take our details and warn us that a ship was coming in whether we liked it or not.

They did contact Marina Coruna and tell them that they were our destination.  Marina Coruna informed us that we needed to sail to them if we could not get our engine started and they would help us at the pontoon.  We tried everything to get the engine started including changing the fuel filter and no luck.  With the strong head wind and the rough seas outside the harbour we decided…what the heck…lets try to sail into the Marina.

VERY BAD DECISION!

As we sailed into a tighter and tighter position the Marina became clearer.  What we thought were outer pontoons were in fact concrete breakwaters with the Marina inside.  With one human in the engine room the other human was not doing the best tacking job and it did not look good for getting in.

The Marina was contacted to ask for help.  They now informed us that we were too big and the winds were too strong for their little boats.  We convinced them to come out and try to lend a hand.  But their little boat was of no help and we were drifted back now further into the small channel.  We asked if there was a recue service that could help us.  ‘No’.

We could anchor here in 30m.  This looked to be our only hope as the shore behind us was rocks.  That was just before a giant merchant vessel came round the corner and headed straight for us.  They started shouting at us in Spanish on the VHF to get out of the way.  Nothing can stop one of these babies and there was no roam for it to move.

I THOUGHT THAT WE WERE GOING DOWN WITH THE SHIP.

 

 

Then the engine started.

 

It was the most wonderful sound I had ever heard.

The Marina boat led us into the entrance and we tied up to the first pontoon.  We were taking no chances.  I watched in embarrassment as my humans kissed the Marina staff, the pontoon and the boat.

 

The engine troubles have been tracked down again to that bad tank of fuel.  The delay in updating the blog was because I had to use my Internet ‘swauvy’ to track down and order parts to make both a switch over dual fuel filter system and a separate cleanable filtration system for the bad tank.

 

This means we are stuck in an expensive Marina, when we would rather save money on the hook, waiting for parts to be delivered.  The good part is the Marina is in the middle of town.

It is a new day.

And we might as well enjoy ourselves.  First thing is first we have to check out the sights in town.

And find something to eat.

Then we have to get really lost.

But finally find the biggest tourist attraction in La Coruna.  Hercules light house.

 The Spanish of this region were originally Celts so they share not only similar foods like the spanish pasty, but also bag pipes.

(video of bag pipe players)

The Marina have left us on the outer pontoon until we can get all our engine trouble sorted.  It does mean that we have close to a 1 mile walk by everyone one else to get to the office.  Over the last few days we have met lots of other boats.  Some with broken masks, others with torn sails and even more with engine troubles.  This harbour is a popular first stop to aim for if you are going straight across the Bay of Biscay, and many boat barely make it in like ourselves.  The owners have responded by either repairing the boat or giving up.  Some are having to go back home to make more money to pay for someone to repair their boat, others are changing their plans and trying to find a cheap place for the winter to complete the repairs themselves.  Some have given up all together and cutting their losses.

We are ok.  Hopefully we can get the parts and the boat fixed up in a week.  We are not ready to give up yet!

I am being left behind tonight so that the humans can sneak off and do some night life exploring in the town centre.  These two are a little old for dancing so I suspect they are in search of the elusive local’s tapa bars.

Fill you in later on what state they come home in.