Vigo visit

A visit to Vigo proved interesting, I hadn't realised before the potential for skateboarding that the wide open plazas and pedestrian areas presented. Megan had told Alex where the local skaters congregated near the Yacht club and we wandered up through the old town and back towards the particular square Megan had mentioned.

The weather continued bright and sunny with odd showery intervals.

The young dinosaur continues to grow, and possibly because of the recent match with Manchester united in the UEFA cup the ugly merman statue was decorated with a Celta de Vigo shirt. the local team are known as " Os Celestes" or the Sky Blues.

Alex was missing his guitar so that initiated a search for a cheap guitar. Normally Lynne likes shopping but she didn't seem overly interested in musical instruments, (neither Lynne or I can play a note on anything)

 However a guitar was found and Alex bought it to donate to the boat so that I could learn.

Alex met up with the locals as planned and enjoyed skating the local spots.

Luckily a small collision with a local was treated very politely!

Birthday presents

Finally the day arrived when we crossed the border into Portugal to pick up Alex from Porto airport.
It is a good hour and a half drive along good ( toll ) roads.

We parked up the hire car and Lynne was soon establishing squatters rights on a prime spot to await new arrivals. Alex's plane was about half an hour late but we soon met up and began the longish drive back to Cangas.

Alex was very pale and his mum was soon advising liberal use of our favourite sun protection P20. Alex was keen to look around Cangas and try out the local skatepark

Later as we walked back along the seafront it seemed no street furniture was safe from Alex.

As Alex has always been interested in photography and street art we showed him the exhibition of old photos which was the current display in the old chapel in the park.

I took Alex on an evening walk to thw old whaling station to show him the graffiti art there, Alex has always enjoyed "Urbex" or Urban Exploration, basically exploring derelict buildings. The Masso factory and the whaling station proved irresistible

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We also had a few beach days to work on Alexs tan!

Alex also enjoyed learning how to order food and drink in Spanish.

On evening we had a text from Jim and Megan that Magnet was anchored in the bay, we had a very pleasant evening having a few drinks around the old town.

Unfortunately Jim and Megan had decided to return home to N.I. for the summer due to family concerns and we arranged to meet up at San Adrian later in the week for a final visit before they sailed to Xufre to store Magnet ashore at the boatyard there.

Aldan and Fatima ( anniversary)

A very early start for us saw us catching the ferry to Vigo at 9am, unfortunately it also coincided with a torrential downpour of biblical proportions. We had arranged to hire a car from Vigo and as we walked squelching along towards the Enterprise office (recommended by the way) enthusiasm was low.
Luckily Veronica was very helpful, spoke excellent English and was able to recommend a good cafe while we waited for our car to be washed, After the usual formalities, we then had a 16 kilometre trip around the Ria before the bridge we had sailed under nearly 7 months ago headed back towards Cangas.
We had a slight detour to stock up at Lidl, great to have a car to carry the shopping! after dropping off groceries at the marina we thought it would be nice to visit Aldan, just a little too far to walk but just a 10 minute drive. The weather continued to be unsettled.

Aldan is a small town at the bottom of a minor Ria off the Ria Pontevedra. It is surprisingly shallow in parts and although only a hop skip and jump from Cangas feels a world away. It was sheltered from the strong southerly's that had been blowing consistently for a good few days.

In another surprise the church was open, we availed ourselves of the opportunity to have a look in a small provincial church. It came as no surprise that the church was .......................surprising.

It was the weekend that the pope was visiting Portugal to celebrate the canonisation of the miracle of Fatima. The two children who witnessed the virgin Mary were canonised and as our eyes adjusted to the light we saw a lady decorating a statue to honour our lady of Fatima.

we were again amazed at the richness and vitality of the church in a small village, The sense that the building was a vital part of the fabric of local life was reinforced by the small acts of decoration that were becoming very familiar. The altarpiece was another gilded work of art. In this instance the beauty was in the detail, small statues in niches and alcoves.

A particular item that had me puzzled for a short time was a statue of pope John Paul who I had not realised had been canonised. Lynne quickly corrected me on this......the lady of sorrows I believe is hiding in the alcove behind John paul.

As well as being the anniversary of the Fatima miracle it was also lynnes birthday, so we adjourned along the sandy harbour to seek out a restaurant or taperia for lunch.

Of course this being Galicia we were duty bound to pay our respects to the local literary figures before eating.
We decided on a small taperia which seemed popular with the locals (this was a Saturday)

Lynne was tempted by the pulpo enpenada, or octopus pie, I was a little more conservative with fries and Zorza (pork, spiced) After lunch we decided to risk the unsettled weather and explore the other notable thing to do in Aldan which  was to explore the "Enchanted forest"

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Aldan at low water.

spring cleaning

Lynne and I walked out one evening and had a closer look around the old whaling station. Lynne had not had the chance to look closely at the place (needing to go through a hole in the fence ,( its not obviously free access )

It is however fascinating.

I will admit at this point to having a bit of a problem with the amount of graffiti in Spain, There is an awful lot of graffiti in public places, it is a bit of an eyesore. I do not however have any issues with decorating an abandoned structure with art, this is neither vandalism or pointless ego massage. Art is what it is and again in a country I first visited when it was a fascist regime in the late 60s and early 70s I can sympathise completely with graffiti as a means of self  expression and political rebellion. freedom of expression should be tolerated even when its sometimes difficult or obtuse. Having seen cave paintings from the beginning of human existence which say the same thing, namely " I was here and this was what was important to me" We are all part of the same family.

I also suppose that we all have had to bunk off work at some point.
which is how Lynne and I found ourselves on the beach at Playa Rodeiera again watching the local dolphins perform, unfortunately it was very difficult to capture them on a phone camera.

However I did catch this shot of a cetacean whos fin exactly lines up with the whaling station in the distance.......................
Later in the day the sun developed a great halo, the cloudless sky was not giving much credence to the old weather lore " ring around the moon , rain soon"

We  had decided to repaint the non slip paint on Dark Tarns decks, our friends on Merry Mood had been kind enough to deliver a large tin of Masonry Paint ( Sandtex) this was recommended by Paul Fay, Dark Tarns original builder who has been using it on  Ti-Gitu for a few years. it is very much cheaper than yachting alternatives which we had run out of and was difficult to obtain in Spain. We worked until the heat became to much and took ourselves off to the beach for a swim. As I say we all bunk off work sometime.......

First we needed to remove items like the life raft and mask off most deck fittings, so a trip to the local Chinese bazar was needed. These establishments are the Spanish equivalent of pound shops in the U.K and are simply everywhere. So loaded up with masking tape and cheap brushes before we got on with the job. We managed two coats on the coach roof and continued on one of the side decks into the cool of the evening.

we managed to get half finished before the weather took a turn for the worse. We were enjoying an evening drink with a couple of British yachtsmen who had arrived the previous evening and enjoying a beer as Manchester United managed to beat Vigo 1-0  on the TV. The dark clouds gathered and just after midnight the downpour began.
No excuse the Sun Halo had predicted just that................
we now wait for better weather to finish the decks, what we have done looks splendid and the non slip is superior to our normal finish.

Masso Factory

Being an avid fan of history it has become increasingly difficult to walk past a big feature on one of our favourite walks along the coast without an increase in curiosity, namely the Masso factory. I decided to try and find out a little bit more about the mysterious Masso. Sadly now derelict it still retains an atmosphere of a past age not unlike the dark satanic mills of home.......however it turns out to be surprisingly modern. The stylised Masso logo on the tower and the general Art deco feel should really have given me a clue.

It is obvious that this was once a huge part of local peoples lives, employing large numbers. It was a pioneer of the fish canning industry, the factory was built after the war and was the first Spanish owned fish cannery and was also the biggest canning factory in Europe. There was another factory a few miles way away at Bueu.
The factory at Cangas shut down in 1992 a few years after the Bueu factory presumably refrigeration had overtaken the canning industry, Morocco seems to be the source of the large amount of canned fish available locally.
Masso was owned and run by the Masso family, the family had been involved in fishing and the sea since the 1890s. Initially in partnership with the French they became a limited company in the 1930s.

These are a couple of photos of the factory floor, many of the processes and machinery in the factory were state of the art for the time but it is also apparent from the photo that the majority of the workforce were women.

Today if you hunt around at the side of the factory it is possible to discover the crèche that was presumably used to look after the women's children. A surprisingly far sighted social advance.

The crèche or nursery has a splendid but now sadly dilapidated fountain featuring a dolphin. The buildings themselves have become a canvas for graffiti artists and at least one building seems to be unofficially occupied. The picture on the staircase like most of the graffiti and slogans seems to have a political message, depicting the Mass factory tumbling off the edge of an industrial conveyor belt.

The building itself is still very imposing and actually on the evening I took these photos the strong wind was vibrating some of the metal panels covering the extensive windows and the noises seemed to suggest that the building was if not actually alive certainly occupied. A bit spooky!

A little way along the foreshore (this is a popular evening walk) is another Masso enterprise that was in operation from the 1950s and was still in operation in the 1970s. It is a whale processing plant.

Again, it is now seriously dilapidated. It was owned and operated by José María and Gaspar Massó .

In its heyday the ramp, now broken up in the foreground would have been the working area for dismembering whales. In the photo below I believe this is a sperm whale. The whales were pulled up from the water by steam engines.

The workings are extensive and its possible to guess at some of the buildings use for processing the carcass and rendering the blubber for oil.

Most of it now is a useful party venue for young people and a surprisingly good art gallery most of the internal walls being covered in graffiti of a high standard. I was particularly moved by the picture below which is probably not far off  life size!

I try not to be too judgemental about history, these things are of their time and need to be seen in the moral context of that time, but I am very glad this particular factory is no longer in operation.

A change of view

We had arranged to have the boat lifted out for a scrub and anti-foul. We normally do this slightly unpleasant job ourselves, to save money mainly. However the small yard perched in the crook of the harbour wall gave us a very good quote which included men and materials so we went ahead with that. An early start on Tuesday morning found us motoring the 300 metres across the harbour to the lifting bay. The men from the yard were waiting for us and very quickly had Dark Tarn in slings.

 We left the boat as she was raised up and got a good look at her bottom for the first time as she was held in the travelling hoist for a power wash. The long tendril of weed from the rudder showed where we had touched the sandy bottom at Pobra and removed the anti fouling paint.

 The rest of the boat was relatively clean with the exception of the prop and prop shaft, this is something we normally just polish, relying on the props copper content being bronze to resist crustaceans. Spanish shellfish are obviously made of sterner stuff than our namby pamby British variety......

This was obviously not working and I wondered if it would be best to try painting it this time. Of course it wouldn't be us painting it and I had time to ponder as we were very pleased to be free to wander off for a coffee and a look round the market. Leaving the men to continue the power washing.

Lynne seemed to enjoy this new form of boat maintainance and was soon examining bargain shoes on the many stalls. I took the opportunity of the early morning to visit the women of the fish market, their fearsome knife skills are a delight to watch.

The sheer variety of fish is also fascinating, even now I still come across species I have never seen before. The more common fish you find are cod, hake, skate, monkfish, sardine, mackerel, dogfish, pipefish, tuna albacore dorado along with a good selection of squid, octopus shellfish etc. Allegedly Spain consumes as much fish as the rest of Europe combined and I can well believe it!

Outside you can find the sole traders, usually women, who have a small selection of home grown produce for sale.

We returned to the yard to find Dark Tarn clean and on a wheeled cradle with a ladder thoughtfully provided for our use. we applied a small amount of primer to parts of the hull that needed it and removed all the marine growth from and polished the propeller. The yard manager spoke no English but did speak German so a strange new mixture " Germanish" was used as Lynne comunicated with him. Again things occurred with seemingly little organisation but always on time and very well done. The yard was very busy as they lifted another three boats that morning , one a large fishing boat, nearly as wide as Dark Tarn is long! Before long we heard masking tape being applied to the hull and it was obvious that the game was afoot.

There was a splendid view of the Ria and Vigo from our new home high on the seawall.

There was a constant flow of walkers walking to the end of the harbour wall

The weather was quite cloudy and overcast with a stiff breeze, actually very good for painting, which was accomplished after lunch and finished in the evening by one of the workmen. We decided to paint the prop shaft and leave the folding propeller polished, the risk of it sticking didn't seem worth the risk. I may however have to dive and clean it more often in future as we are in fertile waters. The painting was finished just before dark (two coats)

The result was very satisfying, Dark Tarn had been lifted scrubbed and anti-fouled in under 12 hours.

We would spend the night locked in the yard (we did have a key but as the last workman didn't leave until 11 pm we didn't use it) and would be launched in the morning. working together it normally takes us a couple of days to accomplish what the Spanish workmen had achieved in a few hours.

To coin a phrase "smart as paint", looking good for our future voyages.