Ria Arousa – III

South of the island there should be a big number of mooring buoys for guests. Hmm… We see only 2. We attach to one of them but we notice it’s pretty shallow. It’s high tide now but at low tide we’ll be very close to the sea floor and we don’t know how the sea floor looks: maybe sand but there might also be rocks so we decide not to risk that and try the other mooring buoy, which gives us half a meter extra depth.

Near the entrance of the port we see 2 big mooring buoys. One is occupied by a big dredging vessel and the other one is not occupied. These must be solid. We decide to attach to the empty one and stay on board today instead of going to the island. It might be a private buoy and somebody might show up.

For dinner, we make our favorite delicious courgette pie 😋

In the evening, the wind is gone and we enjoy a lovely sunset.

On June 23rd, it is the feast of San Juan in Spain… the Spanish mid-summer-night. The tradition is making wood bonfires on the beach at night to celebrate. But wood fires are prohibited here due to the risk of forest fires. We see some fires in the villages though: columns of smoke raising above the houses.

In the afternoon, we take a walk in the city. It has a nice castle at the river mouth but for the rest it’s just another typical Spanish city like many others. There is a Brico hardware store and we need some insulation material for the lid of our freezer. And Sher makes an appointment at a hairdresser. And of course there are some hypermarkets for provisioning.

It’s Wim’s birthday, and as a present from Wim’s parents, we have a treat!… a delicious lunch in the restaurant near the marina. Really good. And the shellfish that Sher had are very fresh and local: there are thousands of shellfish fishermen and lots of mussel and scallop farms here in the Ria. Plus, homemade flan for birthday dessert!

Then, it’s time to leave this expensive and so-so-quality marina. No more thunderstorm are forecasted.

At 1300h we sail back to Illa de Arousa again.

Yay! Dolphin visit! It’s a single dolphin with a damaged fin. Not Manoliño. This one is smaller.

Sher & Marcia row ashore the next day and go visit the Saturday open market in town and they bring back all kinds of delicious fresh things.

In the evening, we celebrate Sher’s birthday. Sher has kept a 40+6 years old white port wine for this occasion 😋. We are happy to have Willem and Pearl from Rambler and Marcia and Tom from Bird Song with us for the celebration!

First scooter ride is up the coast to the dunes, where we anchored before entering this Ria. We drive to the national park and the bay of Corrubedo.

Then the winds really start! Dione IV pushes fiercely in all her 10 boat fenders. We knew this was going to happen but it isn’t nice.

In the early evening, our neighbor at our stern, a big Beneteau 50, starts to bring out long lines to the wave breaker on the opposite side. That would be great for us, too. Two young guys are helping him. We ask them: can you help us, too? Sure! They say, we have a RIB (type of inflatable boat) here. We’ll come and tow a line.

There they are! They tow our line to the wave breaker and attach it there. Great!

Time for another scooter ride… this time along the coast in the direction of Boiro. The main road is pretty busy and there are no bicycle paths. So, we take a lot of detours to avoid this road as much as possible. Sometimes along the countryside, sometimes through villages.

Let’s go testing the modified/improved “Super Scooter” power cases and the new boat-color-appropriate seat cover for Louise!

The area is so beautiful!

The road is narrow so we have to keep to the far right to let a car pass by.

In the early morning, the wind increases again. The forecast says it will be a stormy night, coming night.

At breakfast in the decksalon, Wim notices a little damage in the long 16mm line that leads to the wave breaker. It has a fray just after the bollard. We have some gusts of 20-25kn from the north-east. That’s right on our beam. Suddenly a loud bang! The line broke! Not a big problem because Dione IV leans in her 10 fenders against the pontoon but we have to fix this, considering the storm coming. Our neighbor boat, 3 young guys from the Netherlands, heard the bang too and they offer to help. Well, since our dinghy is deflated and stored on deck and they have their dinghy in the water, it would be handy to use theirs to row over to the wave breaker with a new line… No problem!

During the day the wind increases to 30 knots. Not so nice for a scooter tour so we stay on board and cook an extensive meal: Aubergine Parmigiana from a recipe from Ottolenghi. It’s really special because there’s cinnamon and cumin in it. And a lot of garlic and some chili powder which makes it spice.

At 1200h we leave Ribeira and head to the other side of the Ria, to an anchorage near the town of O Grove.

At the end of the morning, we depart from the Illa de Arousa anchorage. We will head to the island Illa de Cortegada. That is a nature reserve and we had to request an anchoring permit. The permit was granted for 2 nights, June 22 and 23.

There’s no wind at all and we glide along the beautiful blue Ria 💠.

South of the island there should be a big number of mooring buoys for guests. Hm. We see only 2… We attach to one of them but we notice it’s pretty shallow. It’s high tide now but at low tide we’ll be very close to the sea floor. And we don’t know how the sea floor looks: maybe sand but there might also be rocks. We decide not to risk that and try the other mooring buoy.

Here, the depth is 0.5m more so that should be good.

Sher is going to prepare lunch while Wim keeps an eye on the depth gauge to see if we’ll be all right. A little breeze comes. While Wim is watching the depth on the screen, he notices the depth is gradually decreasing! Then he watches our position: we’re moving! This 5 knots breeze make the mooring buoy move. Oops, this buoy is obviously way too light for us! So, we decide to move and drop our anchor. But we don’t see a good anchoring spot. There will be a strong wind from the North later so we want to be in the shelter of the island, on the South side. But here is the entrance to the very busy fishing port of Puerto de Carril. Not a good place anchor at all.

Near the entrance of the port we see 2 big mooring buoys. One is occupied by a big dredging vessel and the other one is not occupied. These must be solid. We decide to attach to the empty one and stay on board today instead of going to the island. It might be a private buoy and somebody might show up.

Well, it sure looks like it hasn’t been used for a long, long time so the chances of somebody claiming it seem minimal.

In the afternoon, the wind picks up 20 knots and we are very stable on this buoy.

At the end of the afternoon, a fat man in a fishing boat comes by the dredger, picks up a rake from the deck and rakes big chunks of weed and big mussels from the underwater hull of the dredger. There must be a huge amount of growth under that ship! This must his family’s dinner 😄

After he finishes he comes to us and says in Spanish: the buoy is mine. We say sorry, we didn’t know that. Can we stay for 2 nights? He answers: No problemo! And he speeds back to the port. All right, at least we know we’re authorized.

For dinner, we make our favorite courgette pie 😋

It’s a very windy day. We had 25 knots all night. Wim didn’t sleep so well, he’s like a cat: gets the wind in his head 😅. Our mooring buoy is very solid so no problem. But Dione IV swings a lot behind the buoy.

We have changed our way of mooring on these buoys: we always had the eye of the mooring line on the forward bollard, then through the eye on the buoy, then back to our bollard. And we fix both ends to the same side of the boat, else the lines are chafing. But on these very old a rough rings on the buoys, we thought there might still be a risk of chafing so we loop the eye of the line (which has a chafing protection socket) though the eye on the mooring buoy and fix the line on our bollard. And add a second line the same way, for security. But we kept our habit of attaching both lines to the same side of the boat. And that makes Dione IV swing a lot, because the force is not balanced. Now, we have changed that and tie the 2 lines to both sides of the boat. That balances her much better.

It keeps blowing all day so we decide to visit the island tomorrow. In such wind, we can’t row over with the dinghy so we need to hoist the outboard motor on it and that is a pain with this wind and waves. But tomorrow the wind will die down so we can row.

Actually, in the evening the wind is gone and we enjoy a lovely sunset.

On June 23rd, it is the feast of San Juan in Spain. The Spanish mid-summer-night. The habit is making wood fires on the beach at night and celebrate. But wood fires are prohibited here due to the risk of forest fires. We see some fires in the villages though: columns of smoke raising above the houses.

At midnight, we wake up from loud music. Very loud: Dione IV’s hull vibrate from the beats of the dance music! 🫨 The open air nightclub of Villagarcia has started. We already heard that from our cruising friends: the start at 0000h and go on to 0006h! The club is about 3 sea miles away but the sound carries easily over the flat sea… This will be a sleepless night… 😕

At 3 o’clock, a big thunderstorm comes. We see a lot of beautiful lightnings and we get heavy rain for about half an hour. During that rain, the music stops. Dis the dance crowd get wet and went home? Did the DJ get his equipment wet? Anyway, it stays silent and we sleep.

Bummer! In the morning is very gray and cloudy and even a bit chilly. We decide not to visit the island and go into the marina of Villagarcia. There’s a forecast for more heavy thunderstorms and then it will be safer in a marina.

So, at 1100h we release from the mooring buoy and sail the 3 sea miles to Villagarcia.

We are received by a kind marinero who speaks Dutch. He has been working in Amsterdam for a number of years in the past.

In the afternoon, we take a walk in the city. It has a nice castle at the river mouth but for the rest it’s just another typical Spanish city like many others. There is a Brico hardware store and we need some insulation material for the lid of our freezer. And Sher makes an appointment at a hairdresser. And of course there are some hypermarkets for provisioning.

Another walk into the city. Wim gets some more foam and glue in the Brico store and Sher her hair appointment.

The were no thunderstorms last night, they stayed over the mainland. It’s a sunny day, it should, because it’s Wim’s birthday. And on his birthday, it’s always nice weather. He hasn’t had one single bad weather birthday in his life!

As a present from Wim’s parents, we got a delicious lunch in the restaurant near the marina. Really good. And the shellfish that Sher had are very fresh and local: there are thousands of shell-fishermen and mussel farms here in the Ria.

Home made Flan as desert. With a birthday candle and happy birthday song in Spanish 😂

In the morning, Wim works on the insulation of the lid of the freezer.

We made a piece of foam last January (see Freezer lid project here) but the foam didn’t stay well, for some reason it deformed over time.

Now, we glue thin sheets of Styrofoam together and fill the 7cm room between the freezer and the lid nicely.

Then, it’s time to leave this expensive and so-so-quality marina. No more thunderstorm are forecasted.

At 1300h we sail to Illa de Arousa again.

There’s a light breeze on the bow so Mighty Mitsu pushes us into the blue 🌀

At 1430h, we pick up a mooring buoy in the bay at the North side of Illa Arousa.

Picture taken by friends Willem and Pearl ( boat “Rambler” which is moored in the south bay), from up the hill.

Wim continues to glue pieces of Styrofoam on the lid of the freezer.

It looks a lot better than our previous bock of foam and the silver coating should reflect even more heat (or cold?)

After new pieces have glued, they need to be pressed for 24 hours. This kind of water based glue dries out very slow.

Another little improvement for Dione IV: when we swing, the lines to the mooring buoy or the lines of the anchor chain hook sometimes chafe on the waterstay.

We have to do something to protect the lines from damaging…

Wim cuts open a piece of 15mm water pipe and fixes that around the water stay.

That is a lot better. Let’s see if this works. Maybe we’ll have to mount some tubing that rolls over the stay. But to mount that, we’ll have to detach the waterstay and that’s a big job…

Sher & Marcia go visit the open Saturday market in town and they bring back all kinds of delicious fresh things.

The first meter under the waterline is clean now. But because the visibility under water is quite poor, diving to clean the rest of the hull is not an option. Therefore, Wim ties the electric scrubber to the boat hook. Like this, he should be able to reach another meter.

It takes a while to get the skill of holding the boat hook in one hand and holding the suction cup with the other hand but after that, it goes reasonably well. We can see clouds of dirt coming of the brush.

At night, we hoist the dinghy to the side, above the water.

The electric winch on the main halyard is perfect! The dinghy with the outboard motor is too heavy to winch manually.

Like this, we reduce the growth on the dinghy bottom and it can’t get stolen (at least, not without waking us up from the noise).

In the evening, we celebrate Sher’s birthday”. Sher has kept a 40+6 years old Port for this occasion 😋. We read in the news that Jeff Bezos married and he has bottles of wine served that were bottled in his year of birth. Sher got inspired by that! 😉

From left to right:

• One half of the Together-birthday 🙂
• Willem, the skipper Sher crewed with some years ago and he happened to be here on his way back to the Netherlands
• Willem’s partner, Pearl, from the UK
• Tom, from the boat “Birdsong”
• Marcia, from the boat “Birdsong”
• The other half of the Together-birthday 🙂

Another warm day. Every day, there’s no wind in the morning, a bit of breeze in the afternoon and no wind in the evening and night. Really nice!

We spend the day finishing the insulation of the freezer, Sher SUP-ping, Wim swimming / hull cleaning. He has extended the boat hook by half a meter and tries to clean deeper. Difficult. The momentum on the long stick is too big to apply pressure to the scrubber and you can’t see what you’re doing. Anyway, he does the best he can for an hour or so, per session, 2 times a day. But we’ll have to do some serious cleaning when we are anchored in clear water and we can dive.

The layers of Styrofoam are glued together now and we finish the edges with silver aluminum tape.

Done. It looks a lot better than our previous foam, is easier to open because it is glued to the lid, and the insulation is perfect!

Last night, the wind picked up to 20 knots. There’s a forecast for a couple of very windy days so we already had decided to leave this bay but it was supposed to be a calm day today. So, we were thinking of moving to the marina of Ribeira in the late afternoon. But, as usual, the weather is a surprise… The wind keeps increasing to 25 knots and we decide to go now, at 1000h, before it increases even more.

Once we are out of the corridor between the mussel rafts, we turn West. The wind id North-East so we unfurl the Yankee and sail the 7 sea miles to Ribeira.

Once we get to the other side of the Ria, the wind is gone. Pfff… We have to start the engine for the last mile. We see a group of dolphins but they stay at a distance, flapping their tails. Means they are hunting fish and not interested in beautiful sail boats with crews that love them 😁

At 1145h we arrive in the marina of Ribeira. We get the last available spot (we called the marina this morning to reserve a berth).

We are not entirely happy with this spot because we will have the forecasted strong North wind on the beam. Lee shore. But there’s no other option so we’ll have to deal with it. We have had worse. Think Cudillero…

The advantage is, we have a nice view over the Ria and we’re not packed in between other boats.

In the afternoon, we go for a scooter ride. We’d like to visit the dunes west of Ribeira, the national park.

The route in Google maps leads us over the main road which is very busy and has no bicycle path (of course). So, we take some small roads and make a big detour.

Here we are in Puerto de Castiñeiras.

Great views over the entrance of the Ria.

We continue along the coast, passing lovely villages and hills.

Then we drive to the national park and the bay of Corrubedo where we have anchored a few weeks ago.

We anchored in front of the beach over there.

Now, we take a left turn and arrive at the information center of the national park.

During the day, the wind increases to about 30 knots with gusts of 36.

Dione IV pushes fiercely in all her 10 boat fenders. We knew this was going to happen but it isn’t nice.

In the early evening, our neighbor at our stern, a big Beneteau 50 starts to bring out long lines to the wave breaker on the opposite side. That would be great for us, too. Two young guys are helping him. We ask them: can you help us, too? Sure! They say, we have a RIB here. We’ll come and tow a line.

While they prepare their RIB, we prepare 3x 20m line, with bowline knots a total length of 60m.

It is so handy that we have plenty of line ready available on our big spools!

There they are! They tow our line to the wave breaker and attach it there. Great!

We lead the line to our middle bollard and from there to the big winch in the cockpit.

We pull a high tension and that keeps Dione IV from the pontoon. Only in heavy gusts of wind, she pushes in her fenders. We will sleep a lot better tonight!

This is a lot better! Muchas gracias, guys! We bring them 2 beers and 20 euro’s for their petrol but they refuse the money and take only the beers (greedily 😄🍺🍺, they open the cans on the dock 🍻).

Second try to get to the National park of the dunes. We take a short route along the main road. There’s not much traffic so it’s reasonably okay. It takes us 20 minutes to get to the information center, where we leave the scooters behind and take the walk of 3km into the dunes, to the laguna.

Hm. We’re not allowed to go any further. And we’re not at the laguna yet.

Bummer! This is disappointing.

We scooter along the coast in the direction of Boiro. Problem is, the main road is pretty busy and there are no bicycle paths. So, we take a lot of detours to avoid this road as much as possible. Sometimes along the countryside, sometimes through villages.

Here, we pass through a village.

Sometimes the road is really narrow!

Over the “main” street of another town.

Through the countryside.

Many times, we stop to enjoy the views.

Let’s go testing the modified power cases and the new boat-color-appropriate seat for Louise!

After a long climb (to take a lot of energy from the batteries and see if the SOC keeps decreasing instead of resetting to 100% all the time), we drive down to Palmeira.

The area is so beautiful!

The road is narrow so we have to keep to the far right to let a car pass by.

In the early morning, the wind increases again. The forecast says it will be a stormy night, coming night.

At breakfast in the decksalon, Wim notices a little damage in the long 16mm line that leads to the wave breaker. It has a fray just after the bollard. We have some gusts of 20-25kn from the north-east. That’s right on our beam. Suddenly a loud bang! The line broke! Not a big problem because Dione IV leans in her 10 fenders against the pontoon but we have to fix this, considering the storm coming. Our neighbor boat, 3 young guys from the Netherlands, heard the bang too and they offer to help. Well, since our dinghy is deflated and stored on deck and they have their dinghy in the water, it would be handy to use theirs to row over to the wave breaker with a new line… No problem!

We take one of our new 20mm lines and Wim rows to the wave breaker while Sher spools out the line. We tie the end with a double 16mm line via the middle bollard to the winch and bring it back to tension. We now have 40 meters 20mm line (breaking strength 8 tons) and a couple of meters 2x16mm. Hopefully that will survive the storm.

During the day the wind increases to 30 knots. Not so nice for a scooter tour so we stay on board and cook an extensive meal: Aubergine Parmigiana from a recipe from Ottolenghi. It’s really special because there’s cinnamon and cumin in it. And a lot of garlic and some chili powder which makes it spice.

“What is it, Dr. Spock?”

“It’s Parmigiana but not as we know it, Jim” 😄

But it is delicious! 😋

No green spot for us, this night. Red spot. Meaning 40 knots (8-9 Beaufort).

Indeed. At 0200h we wake up. We are rocking quite a bit from the waves entering the marina.

At 0300h is blows 40 knots with gusts up to 50. But our line to the wave breaker is holding. Keeping Dione IV from the pontoon. Only in heavy gusts she leans in her fenders.

At 1200h we leave Ribeira and head to the other side of the Ria, to an anchorage near the town of O Grove.

There’s 5-10 knots of wind from the South. When we get out of Ribeira it’s 30ºC and sunny. But the wind from the South is cool ocean air. That generates fog. We see the sea fog coming in the distance.

After a mile, we are in thick fog and the temperature drops more than 10ºC. All right, let’s turn the radar on. Hm. It’s not working…😕 Wim tries to figure out what’s wrong while Sher reduced our speed and keeps a sharp lookout.

Bummer. He can’t get the radar working. We have a 0.2 nM visibility which isn’t much… But we can see boats on the AIS and keep a very sharp lookout at a low speed.

Luckily, when we pass under the island Illa the Arousa the air clears and we have good visibility 🫡. We arrive in the bay we’re in full sun! ☀️

We pick up a sturdy mooring buoy and enjoy the lovely area.

Then it is time to move on. At 0900h, we disconnect from our mooring buoy and we head out to the ocean. There’s no wind.

We need to skip the next Ria (Pontevedra) and Atlantic National Park Islands Ons and Cies, for now. We are traveling to the US and need to have a secure marina spot for our girl. But when we return, we’ll head back up and visit those places… we don’t want to miss any of beautiful Galicia and the Rias!