Go west young man!

The morning dawned fine and hot, with the added bonus that the pound had made a surprising rally against the euro being at €1.30 for the first time in ages. We set off to find a cash machine and fresh milk and a final Barra ( fat French stick ) from the good pandederia by the harbour. 

The wind was a gentle force 2 NE so I decided to let Lynne take us out of our berth and the marina which she did without a hitch, she was however very nervous! The conditions, including the total absence of other boats, well almost! Were perfect for a first attempt at being a skipper. Close quarter manoeuvres are the thing that scares most yachtsmen if they are being honest not crossing oceans.

The wind continued light as we headed towards the upside down lighthouse on Monte Sanońa.

Its very difficult to Spot in The ^ above photo, but look above the ^ earlier in this sentence and you may spot it and the unbelievably precipitous path to it down the cliffs ( being an upside down lighthouse its at the bottom of the cliff )

As we rounded the headland the wind filled in to a good force 4 and unfortunately went westerly to settle in a NW direction. We were forced to tack ( zig zag into the wind ) for the next 20 miles or so.

Lynne gave out a little shriek as Dark Tarn heeled over in the fresh breeze ( too used to catamarans now! ) progress was steady but slow as we only really made progress towards the west on Starboard tack, the port tack just took us away from the cliffs and gave us sea room.

However the sun was shining and the new Bimini was working so well that Lynne was forced to put on a pulley in the shade!

It took us six hours or so of quite hard sailing to get within a few miles of the Ria at Santander, the wind  dying towards the end as we started the engine and furled the Genoa away.

We passed the Isla de Santa Maria and made our way towards the marked channel. We had met another British couple who had sailed here the previous day and they had kindly texted me about my favoured anchorage, saying it looked calm and sheltered from the NE winds that they had. They had passed it on their way to the marina de Pedrena, which is near the airport ( Seve Balasteros ) where we had flown last year to the Canaries to join Dave and Carol aboard Hocus Pocus. The text from Peter and Linda aboard Suerte meant we could pretty much guarantee it would be OK for us given the shift in the wind to the west and so it proved to be.

The anchorage is just behind the wee headland which looks rather like an island in the picture above,just off our starboard bow.

We prepped the anchor dropped the mainsail and anchored in 10 metres just of a beach that was crowded with locals swimming, sunbathing and paddling anything that floated. We had another two boats one French and one Irish at anchor with us for company, once we had seen to the boat tiredness overcame us both and we realised just what a physical effort it was to sail to windward ( something gentlemen never do! ) the kettle went on and we  sat in the cockpit as a huge ferry going in was followed by a huge tanker going out, speedboats buzzed us and a beautiful yacht similar to a dragon sailed around us. It seemed very busy after the ghost marina at Laredo but as the sun set all became quiet.

We had arrived in Santander.

Our anchorage is in the small bay behind the headland with the palace on it west of Horadada light.

( small anchor symbol )