Guggenheim

Thanks to a very unfriendly weather pattern we had moved into the marina and our new best friend Álvaro showed us around  indicating the hugely impressive clubhouse ( it's three stories ) and the swimming pool. Of course we were more interested in the laundry and showers. Once Dark Tarn was settled and safe we had planned to visit the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. Meanwhile we could enjoy a night ashore, after a wander about, in the way of these things we discovered a bar that was a couple of hundred metres from the boat. It was comfortable and the bar owner had installed a really good sound system and played mainly mainstream English rock music a bit of jazz and world music. We immediately appointed it as our local. Which in fact it was.

 We left rather late.

Oh, Lynne had also become a brunette again at this point.

In the morning we woke and looked out at a grey and drizzly day, as we walked along the pontoons we bumped into Alvero who asked us where we were going, it turned out that Alvero was going into Bilbao and would give us a lift into the city. As we drove along the Ria Álvaro talked me through the pilotage to take Dark Tarn up the Ria into the heart of the city of Bilbao, " on the pontoon the Kayak man will say you can not stay but tell him no, he must only use the end of the pontoon" you can't buy this stuff!

Alvero dropped us at the Guggenheim museum.

The famous building designed by Frank Gehry is very impressive and sits in a bend of the river.

There are several exhibits around the exterior of the building including the giant spider...........

Scary isn't it? After negotiating the rather large queue to get into the galleries we were free to wander around this strangely shaped and slightly disconcerting building.

At the time of our visit the main exhibition spaces were given over to works by Jeff Koons and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

It's all too easy to be dismissive about modern art. However I found Jeff Koons work to be quite interesting and had a surprisingly high 'craft' element, by which I mean to say they are beautifully made, whether they are actually made by Jeff Koons is another debate about the nature of art, however the piece above for example is made of aluminium, yes even the inflatable turtles...... It's very accomplished. I suppose it needs to be said that I would have to exclude the " found art " from this comment, try as I might a vacuum cleaner mounted on two neon tubes " found " or not, doesn't come under my definition of art.

The museum attendants are very anal about photography in the museum and you are only allowed to photograph certain works and only from little green photo point symbols on the ground, so the photo above is of me, slightly rebelling and the resultant 'selfie ' happens to include Jeff Koons Lobster.

Ever since Lynne had read about Jeff Koons work when we were in Newry she had wanted to see it for herself little realising that the opportunity would occur so soon, of course we had to see that dog.......

Notice how we are standing on the green photo opportunity stickers? Infuriating isn't it? Talk about killing creativity, what are they scared of?

This piece is called ' Tulips ' obviously...

Between exhibition spaces I for one enjoyed the building itself, it's a fantastic puzzle with aerial walkways and unexpected views because of the strange geometry.

One of them revealed one of the biggest of the permanent exhibits and begged the question, which came first the art or the space?

  It's by Richard Serra and is called ' The Matter of Time ' the tiny figures in the photo above may give you some idea of the scale of this piece or rather collection of pieces. It's huge and wandering about in and through the twisted ellipses etc. Lynne found quite disconcerting. It supposedly ruminates on the physicality of space and the nature of sculpture freeing the sculpture from the pedestal or base and allows the viewer to experience a private space and time within a public space by exploring the real space within the piece.......................uuummmmmm?

We also looked around the other major exhibition by an artist called Jean-Michel Basquiat which to be honest both Lynne and I felt was just indulgent rubbish.

I offer this example and it's far from being the worst.

On a lighter note as we finally left the museum we found Jeff Kooms west highland terrier standing guard outside the building. It's impossible not to like this fella.....

As we walked across the bridge crossing the river we walked under yet another huge piece called red arches which unsurprisingly were.........red arches.

However something which wasn't in the catalogue was hiding under the bridge on the far side of the river.

In some respects this seemed more honest than a lot of the art we had seen that day.............hearts and minds........

Bilbao

We are In actual fact anchored in the harbour of Getxo ( the x is a 'ch' sound, so pronounced getcho) . Bilbao, the city  itself is about 10 kilometres up the river. We spent most of our first day just lazing on the boat and then we blew up the inflatable dinghy to go ashore. There are three marinas at Getxo, we tried the biggest first to ask if we might leave our dinghy on their pontoons. I'm afraid the language barrier proved insurmountable.

At the second marina however we had a stroke of luck, the man running it, Alvero, turned out to be the port officer for the O.C.C. ( Ocean cruising club) of which I am a member and couldn't have been more helpful. He allowed us to land at the marina and also gave us instructions to a chart agents in the city to buy some local charts. He also gave us some rivets to try for size to fix our broken boom vang. 

We had a quick look around and returned to the boat. There are some good reasons to dawdle in Getxo, one is the proximity to Bilbao and its many museums and galleries, but for fans of heavy engineering like me, ( I can't help it really I'm from Fred Dibnah country ), the big attraction has to be the Bitzkia Bridge.

This marvellous thing is a transporter bridge and for a small charge you can walk across the top span, Lynne wasn't very keen initially but said she would think about it! 

So I had a plan! The following day armed with Alvero's instructions I went ashore leaving Lynne to wash her hair, and made my way to the underground station at Areeta, the local stop, the entrances to which are quite striking and known locally as 'Fosteritos' after Norman Foster who designed them.

I managed to negotiate the self service payment and found my way to the tiny shop in the centre of Bilboa that held the all important charts. Manolo the owner was very helpful even offering the advice that if I was going to be sailing in Spain for any length of time I should really learn to speak Spanish. I had to agree......

Returning to the boat having had success with the charts I also bought bread and pan chocalades so Lynne was in a good mood and agreed to accompany me on the bridge.

Of course we had to have lunch first!

The Bridge was opened in 1893 and was the first all metal bridge of its type to be built, Portugaleta at the time was a big producer of iron and steel, it's been earning its living ever since. We have a longer one at Runcorn but first tops most things!

We took the elevator up one of the upright sections and it's interesting to see how closely the structure is integrated into the town. Then came the bit that Lynne had been quietly dreading as we stepped out onto the walkway above the river.

It's really not that bad and the views are tremendous.

In this picture Gatxo is on the right and Portugaleta is on the left, Dark Tarn is anchored in the bay top right.

Or just behind Lynnes head on this picture.

We had arrived in Portugaleta at lunchtime which in this part of Spain lasts from one o'clock until about five in the afternoon so we had some time to kill.

We discovered a fascinating collection of old buildings and alleyways full of shops ( all closed for lunch) 

As the town is built on a very steep hill there is quite a bit of climbing involved luckily the local authorities have been kind enough to install escalators to help weary pensioners!

There is a church which is very conspicuous from the boat that we were keen to have a look at, the Basiica de la Santa Maria. Of course it was closed until five! However it was a good excuse to find a cafe and discover how much our afternoon coffee habit would cost us in Spain.

We were pleasantly surprised to find it was cheaper than France,

In the late afternoon we wandered up the hill to the Basilica. It's so crowded in on the hillside I'm afraid I couldn't get a decent picture of the whole church on my phone but it is a typically Spanishe construction in a lovely honey coloured stone, this is the entrance Portico.

The present church dates largely from the 15 th century and has some marvellous things from the mediaeval era inside, not least of which is the magnificent carved alter piece.

It's the work of two different artists and it's possible to tell the difference between the right and central panels and the left.

There are also beautifully decorated alter pieces in the many side chapels.

There were also many paintings and statues, this one is is of St Roche, the local Saint, not one either of us is familiar with but I wonder looking at the sea shells whether it's another name for St James? We are on the northern pilgrimage route to Santiago de la compostella. A fascinating visit. We noticed many religious statues in niches on various buildings throughout the old town. It would take some time to explore properly.

However we had to return to the boat and as we crossed the marina bridge the water was alive with fish.

Later we were sat in the cockpit watching the nightly vigil by over 20 small boats who come out at dusk to fish, I couldn't help but wonder if the fish had discovered that the safest place to be was where the fishermen had just left from!

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.

We were anchored just below the famous transporter bridge ( well famous if you like bridges I do ) almost in the heart of the city.

Definitely in the heart of the docks as in the few hours we had been sleeping two enormous cruise liners had berthed.

The repairs could wait we were still a bit sleep deprived and we had a whole city to explore and a new language to learn!