Region 'Bay Of Biscay'

Finding ourselves in fog and rain with the visibility down to 50 meters we used the radar to navigate our way out of this Ria. It was made difficult by the many floating oyster beds everywhere. The Furuno radar picked them up just fine (actually amazingly accurate) and we had no problems keeping clear of them and other boat traffic. Finally we broke out into sunshine and motored along once again enjoying the sights.

This was another laid-back day just sightseeing around the islands and coastlines of this beautiful area. No sailing today as it was calm but we enjoyed the day anyway. This area is home to oyster production and they take it seriously with floating beds everywhere. Too bad we didn’t get off the yacht long enough to try some.

Sean had gone home to Sotogrande for four days to see his family. He had been with us since early July and was way overdue for a visit home. Tracy and I spent the week enjoying all that La Coruna had to offer and that was a lot! It’s a very historical town as well as beautiful. We really enjoyed the back alley seafood restaurants and tried ‘Elephant Toe Barnacles’ for the first time.

Ready to depart Santander for La Coruna. The seas are flat, the sun is shining but we end up having to motor the entire way as there was little to no wind. It’s a good thing the yacht is set up so nicely to motor along. We burn about 8-9 liters per hour and can make over 8 kts. It’s very quiet too, you can barely hear the motor from the cockpit. The sea is deep blue and along the way we have a nice encounter with a pod of about 30 dolphins.

Finally, we were able to depart Ile de Re and this time decided to see if we could make it all the way to Santander, Spain. The storm broke one of the rubber pieces on the anchor snubber line and bent the hook attached to the anchor chain pretty badly too. As we rounded the northern corner of Ile de Re and started out in the Bay of Biscay again we encountered some Atlantic rollers left over from the gale but the yacht rode them easily.

Had a false start leaving Ile de Houat as we headed out only to find beating windward in 30 kts of wind was not something we wanted to do for the next 14 hours. We went back to our anchorage for another night and started out the next day determined to make up for lost time. We planned our passage all the way to Arcachon but about half way down the French coast we got another imminent gale warning for our area so we headed into shore.