Peter and Lynda were up with the lark and I raised myself to help Pete ' Spring off ' the pontoon, this manoeuvre involves motoring against one of the mooring warps ( usually a spring) to encourage either the bow or stern to magically move out against wind or tide. This was necessary as we were pretty squashed up on our long pontoon, less than two feet or so between boats. The weather was still drizzly so I decided bed seemed a better option as even though the wind was up neither Lynne nor I are keen on sailing in the rain. The opportunity seemed to present itself for a visit to the Tito bustillo Arts centre, a visit to the actual cave would have required us booking weeks in advance and having spoken to people it seemed the cave visit would be limited to one small area and it would be important to get an overall view to visit the exhibition. We duly turned up expecting to be relieved of €5.30 each and were pleasantly surprised to be told it was free on Wednesdays!
It was difficult to take photos as the whole exhibition attempts to reproduce a cave like feel, there are cinema and interactive presentations, luckily in Spanish and English.
The exhibition was fascinating even more so for being free!
There were some reproductions of some of the cave paintings and some great displays that made the sometimes confusing images clearer, as these pictures spanned a huge timescale some estimates are that pictures were being over painted for over 10,000 years made it difficult to isolate images.
Some of the artefacts however were easy to appreciate, this was described as an ambiguous object. I can help them out there, it's a spear straigtener. Some of the small carvings were exquisite
and Neolithic people didn't seem so far removed from ourselves except of course by 20,000 years or so.....
As we had saved the entrance fee we treated ourselves to a coffee on the rooftop cafe.
The views back towards Ribadesella were great and even the weather seemed to be improving. Impulsively perhaps we decided to leave on the afternoon tide and as the wind blew us firmly onto the pontoon we Sprung off with aplomb! and promptly dropped a fender overboard which was kindly recovered by the beach rescue inflatable, 100% record intact!
Unfortunately the strong wind that had been blowing all day wasn't cooperating out at sea and we had to motor. The original plan had been to sail through the night 85 miles to Ribasoa. That wasn't happening so we began to search the pilot for alternatives. One that seemed suitable was within 15 miles so we headed for El Puntal in Villa Viciosa, the pilot said it was a comfortable marina and anchorage dredged to 2 metres deep with a difficult entrance. It was right on one count.
As we approached the narrow entrance to the Ria, swell was breaking worryingly in the shallow entrance bar, we were two hours after high water and the water in the ria was flowing at over 3 knots.
This photo was taken after we had passed the breaking swells as Lynne was calling the depth constantly while I steered to avoid the many rocks to port at the bar. Once in the Ria we gunned the engine to crawl to the dredged marina about half a mile away. It took an agonisingly slow 30 mins to get there and there was a total absence of any yachts of our size and draught on the marina pontoons being mainly small motor/fishing boats. On the second attempt we found a suitable berth and tied up, I then did some maths and realised we would be aground in about an hour!
We hurriedly dig out Dark Tarns legs from the cockpit locker and as it went dark fitted them and the control lines. We had last done this in Conwy over a year ago.
As the tide fell we realised that the bottom beneath us wasn't level and we developed quite a list however our trusty legs which we had made in Preston held us up as the tide fell to 0.7 metres.
Needless to say we stayed awake until low water passed and didn't get much sleep as it rose again. We knew high water was 7 o'clock in the morning and we were determined to leave this charming not to be missed spot as described in what we now know as the ' book of lies' or the RCC pilot book. Early morning saw us fully afloat again and listening to cock crow from a nearby farm. Fishermen were already turning up to catch the morning tide.
We got rather covered in glutinous mud as we dismantled our legs and stowed them away again. We were exhausted by the effort and we're glad to finally slip down the river and back out to sea. We still had no wind and had decided to head for a little place that seemed to offer possibilities a few miles past the large city of Gijon. It was called Luanco and we knew it had a small marina and occasional fair weather anchorage. The book of lies described it as good for a lunch stop or occasional overnight stay. Suffice to say we were taking this with a pinch of salt by now!
The visibility dropped to less than a mile as we covered the 18 miles or so across a grey windless sea. Lynne went below to try and get some sleep and as we passed Gijon it vanished into a foggy drizzle. The harbour wall approached and as we turned in to the small harbour I just wanted to find a berth and rest.
Luckily one was available and we were
Met on the pontoons by Danny who helped us with our lines, I looked at the depth sounder, did a quick calculation and realised that we would have over 3 metres under the keel at low water. We could relax!
As I walked up the pontoons to Danny's office to do the paperwork I silently cursed pilot book writers and looked forward to exploring Luanco. There was an intriguing church just peeking over the breakwater.............
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