Woke up early and was surprised to see the Picos de Europa clearly, completely beautiful in the clear morning light reflecting off the snows still trapped in the northern faces.
I was entranced and as I sat in the cockpit I vaguely noticed that as we were on the flood ( tide coming in ) the water too was crystal clear. I simply had to give it another go. I donned my mask and could see the problem with the log impeller straight away, a large crustacean had welded itself to one of the impeller vanes. Lynne spotted for me ( just in case for whatever reason I didn't come up she could immediately ring the life insurance people ) and after several attemts I had levered the thing off.
Unfortunately I should have had the foresight to wear gloves as my fingers had several deep and very stinging cuts. I then claimed not to be able to row and sent Lynne off to the panadaria.
Her rowing is getting better with practise. Lynne suggested a beach day which seemed fine to me and we spent most of the afternoon doing very little and admiring the view from our little beach.
Dark Tarn at anchor with the Picos de Europa mountains in the background.
Much as we had grown to like St Vicente it was getting time to leave, the winds were forcast light but northerly so we made the decision to sail 35 miles down the coast to Ribadesella, setting off first thing in the morning as the ebb tide would help us west along the coast.
We like watching the town light up as the sun sets.
Morning was busy as Lynne again set off to the panadaria for fresh bread and I retrieved our kedge anchor which had been set as a secondary stern anchor to hold us in the stream. We left the harbour and found a total absence of wind, which gradually became a light force 1-2 breeze. The motor was brought into play.
As we covered a few miles down the coast we noticed a peculiar phenomena, there was a distinct change in the weather pattern as we approached the Lee of the Picos.
We passed from bright sunlight into low grey cloud, I can only imagine this was the mountains making their own weather. It was certainly distinct.
Luckily the winds were still very light and although it was very grey it continued warm, we set the autopilot and watched the coast pass by. I was particularly interested in a small drying lagoon that I had considered for the purposes of drying Dark Tarn out, scrubbing her off and maybe applying some fresh anti-fouling paint. I was quite taken with the name of the place, the " Ensenada de Poo"
I was still tempted but Lynne reminded me we needed to make some miles and a suitable recce would take a few days so we carried on as planned.
As we approached I was a little apprehensive as the pilot mentions that the entrance to Ribadisella should only be attempted in favourable conditions, which we had, nonetheless as everything on this coast is a first for us it is always a little edgy.
In actual fact the entrance is very scary! It narrows to a 20 metre gap between the harbour training wall and an exposed surf beach complete with surf.
The swell which had been constant all day suddenly formed breaking waves just a few metres to starboard. As we turned the surprisingly sharp corner and he swells followed us in along the channel for a short while then all was calm, if a little shallow as we were within a couple of hours of low water.
We followed the channel up towards the town and chose a berth against the quay just past what we imagined was the Lonja mentioned in the pilot ( this turns out to be a fish dock ) strangely Lonja is Spanish for slice......
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