Wednesday 11th August
We had set the alarm for 0645 to be up and away early, but when JP got up he looked at the forecast on the Navtex and came back to bed saying that we could stay there. Mo had not slept very well because of the pain in her now massaged shoulder, and the windy conditions overnight. After one cup of tea, we got up and sat in the cockpit for a long while as it was more comfortable. By now it was blowing 7's gusting 8, and a Swedish boat was slightly too close for comfort. We had just had breakfast, about mid-morning, when we decided that we were dragging slowly down wind. There was no room for more chain, so we motored forward, dragging our anchor behind us to gain some room. This seemed to work, when eventually the anchor dug in. Another Norwegian boat, anchored beyond the Swedish boat, suddenly lost it, and tried to re-anchor. Eventually he gave up, and must have gone into the marina, about 3 miles upstream. The Swede extended his scope, which fortunately gave us more room, and a French boat beyond picked up his anchor but found it fouled so could not immediately re-anchor. Our day was filled with observation of this activity, reading our books, and sitting in the cockpit. JP was fighting the computer. Not only had O2 withdrawn service last Saturday, and not restored it as agreed, but now Tiscali had changed their access number and this could not be reached on our 'Spanish' mobile. Not forgetting that the bluetooth on the laptop had packed up as well, he was thoroughly frustrated and fed up as he could not deal with any of our issues, notwithstanding several calls to call centres in India that had mopped up the credit on the Spanish phone! Eventually, about 1800 hours, the wind shifted into the NW and died down, so that we could enjoy a relaxed supper of beef casserole in red wine.
We were a bit unsure what to do. Mo was concerned, probably rightly, that the seas outside would be a bit rough after the blow yesterday which was in any case across the northwesterly swell that was being reported. JP tried to convince himself that the contradictory weather forecasts were actually ok, and that the seas would have moderated. In the end, we set off but in raising the mainsail, the No 2 reefing line caught around the bottom batten, and quickly tore the leach of the sail and the reinforcement for the No 1 reefing point. That settled the matter, and we re-anchored. Having taken the main off we launched the dinghy and loaded it aboard. With some difficulty, we motored up to the yacht club to make enquiries about a sailmaker. JP was provided with a number to ring, and an address, but by this time it was lunch time. We took the sail back to Fuga, had lunch, and then motored up to the marina in Fuga. The marina was well out of town, and did not seem to be a hive of activity, so we decided to anchor off the yacht club, where we would have a shorter dinghy ride ashore. It was not until later in the afternoon that we managed to get through to the sailmaker on the telephone, and so we then set off to hump the sail around the town trying to find a taxi. You cannot simply hail a taxi, you have to phone or use a rank. Mo found a taxi rank, and we dropped the sail off up the hill. The lovely lady sailmaker, expecting a baby next month, agreed to do the repair for us, and rang up an English girl friend to act as an interpreter. We collected some groceries on our way back down, and had loaded these into the dinghy and were making our way back to Fuga when there was a loud bang. We had only just passed by the spot. We spent a while watching the activities of the police as they cleared the area, and undertook a search with dogs. Apparently ETA had let off bombs in Santander and Gijon, but fortunately only one old gent was slightly hurt.
We went ashore early to give us time to try to sort out an internet service provider, as this was the best solution Tiscali could offer. We trailed from one internet shop to another, communicating as best we could with diagrams, and winding up back at the Telefonica shop where at least the chap had heard the term GPRS. He felt the need to take the back off the phone, and of course we were then snookered as we had not brought the PIN number with us! However, he thought he could help, and suggested we came back later. We went off to collect the sail, repaired for an amazingly reasonable €70 getting a taxi to drop us back at the dinghy. JP started to put the sail on while Mo got lunch together, and afterwards we both worked at it. JP threw a wobbly when the No 1 batten ripped the batten pocket for a few inches along the stitching. Mo prevailed with her patience and good sense, and we together stitched back the batten pocket where it had come adrift. JP returned to the Telefonica man, where it emerged he did not really understand what we wanted to achieve, but he gave us some software to use with a mobile and a GSM/GPRS card (not actually very helpful). JP called by the supermarket for some more fruit, bread and instant coffee. After supper of Mosoulet we raised the anchor and set off, hopefully for Vivero, some 180 miles distant. There was no wind, so we motored all night. For a while we got some help from a light following wind. It was a lovely clear night, with no moon until a sliver of new moon much later in the night, and lots of shooting stars. JP was joined on his watch by a pod of dolphins, and fish were jumping clear of the water to avoid them.
Mo saw the dawn in, and took photos of the rising sun. The sun was shining on the Picos Europa mountains, some 30 miles away.
We relaxed and read in the hot sun, but decided to go into Gijon as the fuel gauge is more or less meaningless, and we were worried that with all the motoring and generating since filling up at Bilbao, we would run out of diesel. There was a wait for the fuelling berth, but having filled up we motored across to the visitors pontoons to get some water. JP grabbed a hose, and was informed by its owner that it was his own property. Imagine the sheer panic when the nozzle attachment shot off the end, and disappeared down the tube towards our water tank! Despite pulling the floor up and bunk apart, and fishing for it down the tube from the deck, there was no sign of it. JP left some money in the care of the neighbouring French boat, as the owner had gone ashore, and used his best schoolboy French to write a note of apology. Fresh from this debacle, and without having had lunch (it now being 1630) we set off again for Vivero. The main halyard had wrapped around the shrouds, so we had to abort the first attempt to raise the main, take it down, in order to unscramble it. Then with the main up, the jib would not deploy. This proved to be due to the short sheet getting jammed into the sheave with the main jib sheet. Not having a solution, and expecting to go up the mast, JP had Mo take the main down yet again! While all this was going on, Mo decided to remove the sandwiches that she had just made back to the fridge, as they were curling at the edges in the sun. The solution proved to be simpler, as brute force using the mast winch extracted the two sheets from the sheave and got the jib deploying again. Thus we finally set sail, and were rewarded by a pleasant breeze (the first for a long time) for a short while. As we rounded Cabo Penas, the wind became a following one, and in any case died, so that we had to start motoring again. It clouded over, and the night when it fell was as black as the ace of spades.
The night never improved, and dawn was only just breaking when Mo came on watch at 0700. However, a breeze set in from the NW after a little while, and she was able to set sail. JP was out down below, and Mo enjoyed experimenting with the sail setting and tacking without being told what to do. She felt she'd learned a lot that way. There was more wind inshore, and we tacked along the coast until we were able to bear away into Vivero, where we anchored off the beach near the town. There was not another yacht in sight here, although as the weather was still very dull this was perhaps not too surprising. The ria had a number of beaches and was most beautiful, having wooded hillsides and steep-to rocky sides. We had a drink, and went to sleep. When we awoke, the Norwegian yacht C'est La Vie that we had been at anchor with off Santander had joined us, and later a British yacht came in too. Peter Manly had sent a number of text messages with details of a free service provider in Spain, www.gonuts4free.com and JP eventually managed to overcome his deliberate mistakes in setting this up and getting it to work with the MovieStar phone.
There had been celebrations ashore well into the early morning for the Fiesta de San Roque, and Caryn and Sven from C'est La Vie (cest.la.vie.homepage.dk) told us that they had enjoyed a free concert in the main square the previous evening. We had not long had breakfast when they arrived, and we spent quite a while chatting. Mo was feeling delicate following a stomach problem the previous night which JP had put down to the heat. Later JP went over to CLV as Sven had mastered the art of getting weather faxes over the shortwave radio, a skill that would be useful to acquire given the sporadic and sometimes unlikely forecasts available locally.
Tuesday 17th August
JP spent most of the morning messing about with the laptop, which had mysteriously lost its voice. He eventually downdated the system to a checkpoint (when the sound had worked) earlier in the month. Unfortunately this lost the programs that Sven had set up the evening before, as well as the Gonuts internet connection. Although it was a bit boisterous, after lunch we decided to go ashore and try the so-called Hypermarche. We tarried a little on the way back, walking up through the square to the old church and back along some narrow streets. JP went into an electrical store as he wanted some headphones for the SSB. He gestured to the man to describe what he wanted, and was led to a fridge freezer. Thinking he had been misunderstood, the freezer door was duly opened, and a variety of headphones were offered to view. We had got soaked coming ashore, as there was a 'sea' in the narrow channel leading up to the marina, and were enjoying drying out again. To our horror, as we turned the corner in the narrow channel on the way back, we could see Fuga (having been anchored in the same spot for two days) drifting across towards the inhospitable concrete blocks that constituted the breakwater wall. A fishing boat was standing by, and we scrambled aboard with about half a boat's length to spare. This was however not enough, as by the time Mo had unlocked and got the engine running, the rudder had touched and possibly caught on one of the blocks, and the hull was coming in to land. The fishing boat passed me a line (I was not in a position to discuss niceties), and he pulled the bow off. To make matters worse, trying to pull in the anchor chain immediately blew the fuse on the winch (I had not been able to get a replacement fuse following the earlier bodge). The fishing boat pulled us in towards the beach, when I was able to recover the anchor by hand, and we were able to motor in and re-anchor roughly where we had been earlier. Somewhat shocked, we took stock. JP donned mask and flippers and took a look at the damaged rudder, which he concluded was not too severe. The hull and keel appear not to have touched. After a couple of stiff drinks, and with a poor forecast for the morning as well, we took advantage of a lull to move the boat closer in under the lee of the hills and buildings at the far end of the beach, and laid out a generous length of chain.
The weather was still very windy and gusty, although in our new quarters across the bay we felt somewhat more sheltered. We also felt a little more secure in having plenty of room to drag before, with luck, missing the end of the breakwater. Mo however insisted on staying on the boat all day, as she did not want to risk a repetition! She was still suffering from her stomach problem from Sunday night. Mo did some washing, while JP worked on the web site again. He became aggravated when he found that the markers he had put into the pages were incorrectly formatted and didn't work. At this point, Mo offered to learn the ropes, and so JP showed her what was required, and left her to it. Meanwhile JP started to sort invoices in order to prepare a schedule for the insurance underwriters, as he had wanted to increase the insured value for some time. Mo was interrupted as JP then wanted to analyse the Barclaycard statements that had been downloaded. Finally, it was getting late when JP needed to go ashore to recharge the phone, as we were unable to send or retrieve e-mails having run out of Gonuts (Our main use for the phone is for web access, and now that Peter Manly has found us www.gonuts4free.com we have christened the Euro, when embodied within a phone balance, one 'Gonut'). He took the portable VHF so that he could be summoned back! JP called at C'Est La Vie, who had got their engine running again with an oil filter ordered from Madrid, courtesy of Lolita. JP had lost the executable file for the weather fax database, and so Sven put another copy on a USB memory chip. Needless to say, CLV's hospitality being what it is, JP was out of VHF battery before the got ashore! We had a game of Scrabble, but Mo had to turn the computer screen off as JP was transfixed by the sight of weatherfaxes crawling in line by line! JP won! :)
The wind had died down, but there was still a cold front going through, with showers of rain and the odd gust. We went ashore to get some stores. We had a walk around the market and fishmarket, but funked buying anything because with our lack of Spanish or knowledge of the local fish offering we felt it was easier to get from the supermarket. JP also tried to find a cable with jack plugs to join the SSB earphone socket to the computer. We then went to the Eroski supermarket and did our shopping with the exception of bread and tomatoes. Parking this back in the dinghy, we went to the Haleys 'hyper' market where we picked up the missing items, some engine oil for the boat, and JP found some jackplug adaptors and a cheap headset to butcher and make up a cable with. As we returned to the boat, we saw C'Est La Vie disappearing into the distance. After lunch, JP continued to work on the insurance schedule, until finally it was finished and could be sent off to the Pantaenius. Mo was able to complete linking the journal page to the narrative. After supper, we went back to select some photos, and JP started to show Mo how to reduce them by cropping and sizing them.
JP was up early, and with hacksaw and solder, made up a cable using the parts the had bought the day before, and initially this worked well. We finished off the web site by linking in photos, and then found we had a problem with links from the journal page, and after a long time identified a missing " mark. Over lunch, we transferred our labours onto the web server, and were pleased it had not cost us all our 'Gonuts'. JP then found the chart plotter program was not talking to the instrumentation on the boat, especially the GPS. This came down to a broken wire on the plug into the computer: the cable was too short. The anchorage was very rolly for some reason, so JP got very aggravated with the cable, plug, and soldering iron which refused to come together at the appointed place. He then burnt himself. Working on butane gas, the iron emits a hot jet of gas towards any hand that happens to be holding the work, to the point where Mo is now quite scared of it. In desperation, JP pulled out the desktop computer and unscrewed the chart table panel to find out why the cable was pulled so short. After unscrambling the mare's nest of cables there was sufficient at last to work on. The whole thing was replaced in a slightly more workmanlike and tidy fashion, so there was at least some benefit obtained from the exercise. There was a brief debate whether we should move around at least to Ria del Barquero, but as Mo was already cooking shepherd's pie for supper, this was quickly put to bed. After supper we had another game of scrabble which JP won again.:)
