Countdown to Spain

Saturday 16th June…  Well it seems a lot happened today. First we went to the Capitainerie and booked in for another two nights, and then to one of the local Chandlery shops and bought ourselves a book called Bloc Marine – Espagna & Portugal. It gives all the details about the marinas for the whole of Spain & Portugal including the Balearics and more, with photos too. A nice couple actually gave us their old French Marinas version when we were in Camaret and it has come in very useful. While we were out and about we spotted some activity on the water, and it turned out to be rescue dog training. The dogs were swimming out to a ‘man overboard ’ and taking them a float. Dean reckons they were Newfoundland dogs, they looked a bit like bears actually. 

The Golden Globe Village here was open to the public today and so we took a look as it’s only at the other end of the marina. It was actually free to go in and they also let dogs in too! A double bonus for us. To be honest there wasn’t much to see, except some information about the competitors, and storyboards about Sir Robin Knox-Johnson’s 1968 race which he won. He was the first person to sail around the world single handed.

Dean and Saffy ready to see what it's all about

Suhaili's on the way

This is normally the home to the Vendee Globe

Dean's off down the race pontoon

Now it's Linda's turn to get some photos

What an achievement that was

Unfortunately Saffy wasn’t allowed on the race pontoon so we took it in turns to have a look. There wasn’t much to look at as the competitors boat weren’t in yet. However, we seemed to get quite engrossed in it all, especially as there is only one female competitor and she is Susie Goodall from the UK! In fact, she comes from the Midlands area and learn’t to sail at Himley Hall Sailing Club, just down the road from us. Fancy that. So that was it we had to find out more. 

Here's Susie's berth awaiting arrival of her boat 'DHL Starlight'

Back at Thesee we had a lovely afternoon, doing bits and bobs including hull scrubbing and bread making (by hand!). We have got a brilliant berth in the marina, right on the end of ‘A’ pontoon so we can see all the boats going by. In fact this morning a boat went past and there was tons of smoke coming out of the back of it. They turned their engine off quickly and had to call for help from the harbourmaster. It was odd really because they had to just sit and wait to be helped back into their berth, and only 50 metres away on the next pontoon was the lifeboat. So near and yet so far you could say. Anyway, the harbourmaster tied them to his rib and ushered their boat to safety. 

So where was I ? About 5pm we were relaxing in the cockpit with a glass of wine and the French neighbour next door got talking to us. He said that the race competitors were all due to come in this evening starting within the hour. We didn’t know that and so quickly got our flags out and hoisted them up the mast. Well why not get into the party mood, especially with our very prominent position in the marina. 

Our flags are up, just in time

We're about the only boat here who's made an effort

After a short while the competitors started arriving at short intervals. We didn’t know who was coming next and we almost missed ‘OUR’ Susie Goodall. We just spotted her approaching at the last minute and dashed outside without haste, Dean giving her a big wave and she returned the compliment and waved back. Go Susie!!  Does that make us famous now? I wonder if she spotted the Black Country flag we are flying? And tomorrow Sir Robin is arriving on Suhaili, the boat he won the race on 50 years ago. I guess we’ll try our luck for another wave. 

Number 73 - 'Our' Suzie Goodall

What a day it’s been, even Linda’s hand made bread rolls have turned out incredible

Sunday 17th June…  A nice warm morning, Dean walked Saffy and then we made a dash to the supermarket so that we could get back before Sir Robin’s impending arrival. Plus the supermarket closes at 12.30pm on a Sunday. We were back at 10.45am and after checking the Vessel Finder website to see how far away Suhaili was, we had time enough to Skype the family at home for our weekly catch up. 

Sure enough at approximately midday Suhaili came into view along the harbour channel, along with a flotilla of Cruising Association boats following. As Sir Robin passed by we gave him a big wave, and YES he waved back! Now we are really famous. 

Here he comes 

 We're over here Sir! .... On Thésée

Excitement over, we came back down to earth and took the laundry for washing. As we passed the local bars there was a Beatles Tribute act in full swing. Then Dean noticed a gorgeous 1922 Henderson side-car outfit coming down the road. What an odd sequence of events. 

She loves you, yeah yeah yeah 

This afternoon Dean was fitting new gas alarm wiring, but it still doesn’t work. The rest of the day we’ve been planning our sail across to the Spanish coast, watching the weather forecast and reading up about which port to go to. At the moment we think we will go on Tuesday morning and head for Laredo near Santander. We calculate it’s going to take about 36 hours non-stop. 

Monday 18th June…  So we managed to squeeze in one more night stop over here in Les Sables d’Olonne. We will have spent five nights here, the longest stop so far. Even though when we arrived we were quite stressed out we’ve managed to relax and enjoy ourselves, and we haven’t really been very far from the marina either. 

This afternoon we took another walk to the Golden Globe Village because all the race boats have now arrived, and Dean wanted to have a look. It’s strange because you imagine they would be quite fancy, but in fact they are far from it. A lot of the competitors were there working away on their boats which seemed so normal in a way. We got to say a few words to the British guy on ‘Lazy Otter’ who very oddly had an umbrella hanging from his mast, so that was a talking point. Unfortunately, Susie wasn’t around so we just took a photo of her boat DHL Starlight. We didn’t stay long. The race actually starts on 1st July and it will take 9 months to complete, so there will be plenty of boat tracking to keep us busy. 

Some of the race boats, this is the Irish competitor's

This one even has a cockpit.... Wow!

Dean gives 'Suhaili' the once over. 

Can't believe this boat sailed round the Globe in 1968

Hey, this one's too big.... maybe the Vendee Globe race for you

Here's 'Lazy Otter' with his umbrella at the mast

'Our' Susie's boat DHL Starlight

The plan for tomorrow is to leave about 6am for our long journey. If all goes well we should be at our destination by Wednesday tea-time. If you've been tracking us on ‘Vessel Finder’ or ‘Marine Traffic’ don’t worry if we disappear for a number of hours. The signal gets lost when you get a certain distance from the coast but will re-appear once we get near to the Spanish mainland. So there probably won’t be a blog post tomorrow evening, sorry about that. Hopefully catch up with you late Wednesday, or Thursday morning.

Our plan B if we aren’t happy in the morning is to head into La Rochelle instead. 

Tuesday 19th June…  Plan B – La Rochelle – That’s our home for this evening. 

An early departure at 6.15am from Les Sables d’Olonne, in the FOG! Can you believe it? We thought it would soon clear but it didn’t. Like I said in a previous blog, we have AIS so we know we can be seen and also see other boats but only ones with AIS. The biggest issue was the fact there was not enough wind to drive us through the swell and so the mainsail kept swinging about. Not the best conditions for a 36 hour sail we thought. And motoring wasn’t an option because without the sails up the swell just jiggles the boat about. The only way we could get the sails to settle was to head in the wrong direction to where we wanted to go. Things didn’t improve and after about 3 hours of various sail set-ups we decided to action Plan B. It was only when we were about 10 miles out of La Rochelle that the fog lifted and it turned into a really hot day. 

Someone's not very impressed with the foggy conditions

Still moping now Plan B is in action, even though it's gorgeous weather now

The bridge linking Ile de Ré to La Rochelle

Almost at the marina now, good views of the towers

Dad, i'm so hot.... i need another haircut

We are both a little disappointed that we are not on our way to Spain right now, but safety of the boat and crew comes first. If the boat's not happy then we're not happy. We both stayed positive today and we think we made the right choice to abort the crossing.

In a way it’s nice to bring Thésée back here to where we bought him. We are only a couple of places down the visitor’s pontoon to where we spent our honeymoon, and we didn’t even have a kettle on board then. Now all our worldly goods are with us!

So, we will try again for Spain tomorrow all being well and fingers crossed for a little more wind. 

Wednesday 20th June... Sorry Thesee Followers, it looks like it's going to be a week of ifs and buts. We've checked the weather update this morning and it seems not a lot has changed since yesterday's conditions. Therefore we've decided that we are not going today. It seems likely that we may go on Friday now. 

Wednesday 20th June continued…  It was a warm night and we had the wind scoop attached to the forward hatch. It worked really well and brought a considerable amount of wind down and through the boat. 

Dad look.... this windscoop is amazing

We were up early and checked the forecast, deciding to stay put here in La Rochelle for another two nights. We’ve met another family who are also waiting to cross like us, so we have plenty to discuss. At 8am Dean was washing the deck before the heat of the day this time. We went to see the Captitainerie to pay our extra dues and we got a free night. Yippee, that brings the cost down considerably. 60 Euros per night here, but 3 nights for 120 Euros makes it feel better when the card comes out of the wallet. 

Around lunchtime we strolled the quite long distance into the beautiful town here. We had forgotten what a lovely place this is. Maybe last time all we had in our minds was buying a boat? It’s a fabulous walk but it was such a hot day, 32 degrees. In the town there are some inner basins and to get the boats into some, the bridges have to open, and this we witnessed today when four Penduick yachts entered. It’s funny because we saw them in Roscoff too. 

Looking across from Thesee to the Capitainerie

Looking the other way across the marina

On the long walk into town

Yachts arriving

Carrying on along the quayside we came across a massive catamaran called Babac, 23 metres long by 11 metres wide. It was so big it actually had a car on the upper deck with a crane to lift it off! You can charter it if you have $68000 a week to spare. 

How the other half live

Here's the car on deck....nice

By this time we were getting hungry and took a table with great views at one of the many restaurants. Food was really nice and Saffy had a rest in the shade. It was too far to walk back to the marina so we hopped on the Water Bus. The marina we’re in is massive and it’s even a good walk after you get off the Water Bus. 

That's a big big wheel

Lunch... or is it Breakfast?

Not another dolphin

Walking along one of the many quaysides

By the time we got back we were roasting and we just had to chill out as much as we could. It’s now 8.30pm and inside the boat it’s still 32 degrees, that’s with all the fans and coolers going all afternoon. 

Thursday 21st June... A lovely morning stroll with Saffy before the sun got too hot. We found a beautiful park/coast path along the south side of the headland with views across the bay to Fort Boyard and Ile d'Oleron. It would be nice to explore the islands here but most of the marinas are too tiny for Thesee. 

This whopping trimaran came in last night....called Maserati

Along the coast path

 Don't know why we didn't find this last time we were here

What a lovely beach 

Looking towards Ile de Ré

It was quite a relaxing day and not as warm as yesterday, so really pleasant. After lunch Dean went for a stroll to the Chandleries, coming back empty handed... He just can't seem to find anything to buy these days. Except we've realised we are missing Imray C50 chart (Sines to Gibraltar). 

Weather is getting windier so we'll probably get up early again and if we feel good to go we'll give the crossing another try. 

Friday 22nd June…  Well today was extremely windy, and we deliberated our action plan at 7am. The trouble is you see it’s going to take about 36 hours to cross from here to Santander and we need to check the weather for the whole crossing. We both agreed that we should delay another day.

Here at the marina they have complimentary bicycles that you can use for two hours, so we hopped on two of them and took ourselves off to the nearest supermarket which is about 3km away. Having already delayed our crossing for three days we’re starting to run out of salad and veg so needed to replenish the stocks. By elevensies we had returned to the boat and had the rest of the day to chill out. For Linda, chill out days seem to be the chance to make cookies, and today's were chocolate flavour ones. 

Linda can only just touch the floor on this bike

Our Boat Galley Cookbook calls these Chocolate Drops

Later we got talking to another British skipper on a Beneteau Oceanis 473 called Silhouette who was flying the ARC+ flag, which means he’s crossing the Atlantic to St Lucia in November. We recognised his boat from seeing it in the Gulf of Morbihan about 3 weeks back and had quite a long chat with him about various things boaty. 

Tonight Dean is checking the boat over and we are preparing for tomorrow’s departure. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that our plan comes together this time. 

Saturday 23rd June…  So today we finally set off to cross the South East corner of Biscay. We had pre-notified our neighbours that we were leaving at 8am because we were slightly cornered in at La Rochelle, and we didn’t want to startle anyone because when you use the boat’s bow thruster everyone appears from nowhere and comes to see what’s going on. As it happened two of them came to offer help and wish us well. It was low tide but also neaps so we were confident we had enough water to edge our way slowly out of the marina and subsequently out of the channel which leads into the bay. After about 20 minutes we were into deeper water and in no time we had the cruising chute up and were steaming along at about 8 knots. The bay here is massive and it takes a good three hours to clear the Ile de Oleron.

Vessel Finder website showing our position and track out of La Rochelle

The wind was a little gusty but the boat and cruising chute were handling it well, our heading wasn’t perfect but it was pretty much ok. At around midday Linda took Saffy downstairs to get her out of the sun for a while and was trying to settle her down in the aft cabin when the boat suddenly started heeling over quite drastically. In no more than a millisecond she rushed up into the cockpit to tell Dean to ‘GET THE SAIL DOWN!’ His reply was ‘IT’S BROKEN!’ The cruising chute is massive and it was just flapping about from the top of the mast. A heavy gust of wind had hit, knocking the sail sideways so much so that something had to give way. Dean immediately started the engine and went on deck to get the sail down and see what was going on. It seems the stitching on the ATN Tacker had been ripped apart, releasing the shackle that holds the sail down, but the cruising chute itself seemed intact. 

Here's the damaged ATN Tacker

You can see the stitching is in shreds

We were both alright, really calm, with no injuries (although Dean later realised he had a big bruise on his hip). When the chute was safely back in the sail locker we rolled the genoa out, changed to the desired course and carried on with our cruise across Biscay. On checking downstairs we found Dean’s tools and spares boxes had been thrown about somewhat and one of the hinges on the loo seat had broken, apart from that everything looked fine. 

About an hour later a racing pigeon landed on the deck, and actually stayed with us for the next 18 hours through the night and into Sunday morning. We named him Pedro and he spent all night under the sprayhood. At one point it was really funny because he jumped on Saffy’s head and just sat there. Saffy was really good and although she wondered what it was she didn’t react at all… as if it happens all the time! Normally Saffy would have pigeon for dinner, and that’s where it nearly ended up after it kept pooping everywhere. 

 Riding the zigzag swell

Hitch-hiking bumble bee on the outboard engine cover

The arrival of Pedro Pigeon

Here's Pedro behind the cushion deciding on his next move

Now he's got his eye on Saffy's water bowl

Landing on Saffy's head!  Whatever next?

The journey was going well, with the sea swell not too bad on the whole. We both commented that as long as it stayed the same we would be happy. By 7pm we started the shift pattern, Linda on watch until 10pm. The hydrovane was doing the steering so we just had to keep lookout. We hadn’t seen another boat all day but we were starting to see fishing boats within a few miles on AIS. By now the depth was over 100 metres and we were approaching the very deep underwater canyons where the depth goes down to over 3000 metres (although we tried not to think about that too much).  Dean came on watch at 10pm to watch the sunset, and the very bright ¾ moon was overhead. 

 Saturday night sunset.... only 140 miles to go

Sunday 24th June…  1am Linda reported on deck ready to take over. The moonlight cast itself right across the water and so it wasn’t a very dark night. There wasn’t much to do apart from monitor a few fishing boats here and there, so looking skywards to the stars was the only thing to pass the time. It was quite spectacular. The moon set at 4am and it became very dark. Dean came back on watch, but he had not been able to rest and wasn’t feeling brilliant. Linda was tired and just wanted to sleep. We made a hot drink and spent half an hour together. Dean had noticed that the depth sounder was reading incorrectly…showing around 5 metres when we knew there was at least 2000 metres. Obviously it was having trouble with its calculations! 

Thesee was still doing great and the hydrovane was steering perfectly. We hadn’t actually had to do anything for over 9 hours apart from keep lookout. The Duogen water propeller was keeping the batteries charged whilst the solar panels were having a rest. Yesterday having them both working at the same time was giving us too much charge infact. Dean decided his hip was hurting and put it down to knocking against something when we had the Cruising Chute incident.

Daylight arrived and knowing we were now in Spanish waters we swapped the French courtesy flag for a Spanish one. That got us in the mood for some Spanish phrases practise. The only one we can remember is ‘Habla Usted Ingles?’ which means ‘Do you speak English?’ We still had not seen any other yachts and wondered if anyone else left La Rochelle yesterday too for the crossing. At midday we calculated approx 40 miles left to go. Eventually we began to make out ‘Land Ahoy’ as the Cantabrian mountains came into view through the haze. Dean tried fishing again…..don’t ask. The sea was such an amazing colour, a really rich midnight blue with just a few white crests here and there. The swell was still manageable, with good and not so good spells.  We could see a large cargo ship approaching in the distance on the port hand side. The AIS showed that it may be a problem for us so Dean called them up on the VHF radio to ‘confirm their intentions’. Dean sounded really professional during the conversation, Linda was so impressed.  

Sunrise this time

Ready to raise the Spanish Courtesy Flag

The Three Sailors..... Los Tres Marineros

By 5pm we were almost in the bay at Laredo/Santona. The swell wasn’t letting up and the wind increased, we couldn’t turn to get the sails down until we were right in the bay and by the marina entrance. There was still good depth but it was quite nerve-wracking because we were expecting it to be a doddle. Linda’s favourite cap blew off her head but the backstay caught it, otherwise it would be heading back to France by now. Dean madly got all the fenders out and attached them. We thought that once inside the marina it would be protected but infact it was blowing a hoolie. There were loads of spaces and we knew which pontoon we wanted to head for, but for some reason (in a bit of a panic due to the wind) our brains decided to head for a different pontoon. We managed to berth without too much trouble but the pontoon was way too small. We were just glad to be tied up. We turned to look at the pontoon where we should have been and there were loads of empty spaces and the pontoons were massive. After questioning ourselves about why we berthed in the wrong place, we moved across to the big pontoons even though the wind was still bad, but it all went well and we’re now a lot happier.

We’ve made it to Spain…… HOORAH !!! 

That's the last post entitled 'Countdown to Spain'. 

The next post will be called 'Cantabria to the Rias'.