Plans Plans Plans: The Bay of Biscay

We had decided to take advantage of the stationary high pressure system out in the Atlantic which was giving us a few days of northerly winds. We planned to leave Sunday having used our stay five nights get a sixth free card we had been given on first arriving. Our free night also gave us a chance for a bit of a blowout at a local restaurant, we had spotted the restaurant earlier in the week it stood out because of a notice of closure pinned next to the menu, the proprietors were about to retire. It seemed a good chance to sample some good food. I had a fishy starter and Lynne was shown by the waiter how to make a " moules spoon " with a fork and shell.

We had a few beers afterwards in the 'Vintage Bar' and we were still up in the morning at nine o'clock!

We slipped out of the Marina into very light winds, there was enough however to allow the "Aries " self steering gear to steer the boat. This is a quite remarkable contraption that steers just using the power of the wind and water. The wind vane is trimmed to be edge on to the wind, this then falls over as the wind comes onto one face or the other, this sideways movement then turns a rudder, the rudder then is pushed sideways by the water flow and pulls the tiller lines thus turning the boats rudder bringing the boat back on course and bringing the wind vane back to vertical..........simples!

It was important to us that we got into passage mode, which means conserving our batteries, the Aries uses no power at all. As we had 200+ miles to cover, or two days and nights at sea, we needed electricity to power our instruments and lights and as Dark Tarn is primarily a sailing vessel and very Eco-friendly, anything that conserved our battery power is to be welcomed. Of course we had also taken the precaution of filling our diesel and water tanks as well.

The wind continued to be light but we were making slow but steady progress.

As night fell the wind began to fill in and was soon blowing a good force 5, at this point we really should have reefed, in fact we should have done it before it got dark as the early part of the night was moonless and pitchy black, this made any sail handling or moving on deck quite tricky especially with the building waves and swell, so we were avoiding the issue hoping that the wind would abate. It didn't. It increased to a good force 6 or what's sometimes referred to as " a yachtsmans gale" Dark Tarn was behaving well, haring along at great speed, doing 8 knots consistently and I saw 9.5 a couple of times, Lynne swears it touched 11 knots at one point!

Fun as it was to be charging along at great speed in a rising wind with waves building as well it was getting a little dangerous so we began to think of what to do. Of course we had left everything too late but after one abortive attempt at dropping the mainsail which left Lynne looking a little worried and me a little stressed, we started the engine to keep the boat head to wind while some frantic gymnastics and lots of shouting finally saw the powerful mainsail dropped and stowed away completely, no more problematic reefing for us! The Genoa alone would be our sail for the next 130 miles and as we were still doing 6-7 knots we were making good progress.

We started to share watches, three hours ' on' and Three ' off'. When it's a little rough Lynnes favourite place to keep watch is our little watch mans chair at the top of the companionway.

From here Lynne can see all around through the doghouse windows and can monitor any other large shipping using AIS on the plotter to her left. It is also warmer than being in the cockpit. The seas increased in size and a considerable swell was building from the North west, when the wind direction changed to a North East direction this made the swell patterns very confused and the boat was being thrown around considerably, too much in fact for either of us to get any sleep. In the morning the situation looked a little better but there was still a lot of swell running after all this is the Bay of Biscay!

Dawn broke with a series of steep grey seas running up our stern.

However on the bright side was that the sun was coming out. We continued watches all the next day and Dark Tarn continued to march inexorably south towards the Spanish coastline a hundred miles away. A grinding sound was coming from the area of the mast and rather than risk a close inspection ( which would have meant raising Lynne, we don't go forward in rough conditions unless we are both on deck ) I had persuaded myself after listening intently below that it was the spinnaker pole that was badly stowed and grinding on the mast, this was again a mistake on my part. We discovered this when with about 50 miles to go we decided to raise the mainsail. The mainsail was fine but the boom vang which is a telescopic strut under the boom which holds it up had sheared away from the mast, two bolts and six rivets had failed, at first I had shouted at Lynne as she had inadvertently gybed during the sail raising manoeuvre, however it seemed on reflection that this was merely the last straw that broke the camels back, and further inspection revealed the rivets to be under length, I silently cursed the Scottish rigger at Largs who had put us at risk by his shoddy workmanship.

I had a bit of a think after effecting a bodged repair and while studying the pilot found out chosen destination Santander to be less than ideal in present circumstances so changed course by a mere 15 degrees to make our new destination Bilbao, same distance but it seemed a more sheltered option and possibly easier to arrange repairs.

Lynne and I were discussing options in the cockpit when we had a visitor.

A tiny, slightly bedraggled and obviously very tired bird landed on deck. He then proceeded to inspect everything including me by landing on my shoulder. He was obviously having trouble with the heaving deck and then chose to try the Aries tiller lines.

When these moved he very comically appeared to promenade around the deck as if he was taking a constitutional.

Finally after sampling a few breadcrumbs he retired to his new cabin by the liferaft where he stayed until we anchored in Bilbao eight hours later. As the anchor chain noisily clattered over the bow rollers he flew out surprising us both and with a trill trill he flew off towards land a few hundred metres away.

As we approached Bilbao in the dark, on yet another moonless night the wind finally dropped off and we had to resort to the engine for the last 20 miles. These seemed interminable whether it was because we were tired I don't know but luckily some more visitors enlivened the wee small hours. I first noticed some phosphorescence bombs going off over the side of the boat, these look like bright sparkling depth charges, a quick check revealed the cause, there were two Dolphins sitting and surfing under the bow and they were kicking off phospherecense trails under the water, quite stunning and beautiful. I attempted to video them, I have no real hopes of capturing that moment but if it is usable I'll post it here.

We discovered the harbour at Bilbao was rather bigger and more complicated than we had anticipated but that could also have been just how tired we were. We anchored by the yacht club and between two marinas in the inner harbour, Gatxo is its proper name part of the port of Bilbao and perfectly sheltered. After a quick rum we turned in.

The morning revealed what the night had hidden.