Well I’m now up to yesterday. Aren’t you proud, I’ve nearly caught up.
After our walk round the peninsular where the palace was, we hopped back on board and sailed west towards San Vincente de la Barquera, 30nm away We had a nice wind angle but the wind was dropping away and soon we were in motoring mode. As seems to be the way on this part of the coast, we were perpetually fighting a 1-2 kt current.
We got our heads around the fuel tanks and how to swap them over. We haven’t actually filled up as yet, still running on the fuel that came with the boat. We have one tank nearly full and one tank nearly empty. Unlike the Seawind you can swap all 3 engines from one tank to the other, with the pull of a lever.
The motor sail along the coast was very spectacular. The sun was shining on the snow capped mountains in the background, as we passed village after village perched on cliff tops, covered with a mat of very green grass.
We had to swing around a set of “wind towers” sticking out of the ocean. Not sure what the hell these were – strange looking towers to be there.
We got to our destination – San Vincente de la Barquera, an incredibly beautiful old fishing town on an equally beautiful estuary, just after 6pm. The guide book and our English farmer both said to tie up to the fishing boats, but some animated Spanish guy on the wharf had other ideas and waved us away.
We hunted around and found a spare mooring in the estuary, a bit of a way from town. Although the estuary is full at high tide (which it was),it empties out at low tide and we found ourselves in a narrow channel with sandbanks close by either side that night at low tide. But more about 3am later.
We weren’t sure about the mooring so I (and the anchor alarm (set at 66ft)) stayed on board La Mischief whilst Allan and Joan launched “A Little Bit Of Mischief” and set off the explore the town.
There weren’t gone long and were pretty disappointed with the town.
After a quick nightcap, we hit the sack. With things quiet in the boat, you could hear the DJ and the music waft across the estuary. As the night progressed, the music and the DJ got louder and louder. We were quite a way from the town, but we could still hear it clearly. Occasionally cannons would go off and there would be a puff of smoke above the town.
A normal Saturday night in San Vincente perhaps???
With the change of the tide the anchor alarm went off a few times and at 3.30am the music was going off. Think Cas and I might have had a good time there!
Next morning we were up at 8am and off out the channel at high tide heading for Gijon.
And with that, my blog is now officially up to date!!!!!!!
A Little Bit of Mischief 