Bilbao to Loredo 24nm
Friday 31 August
We are very happy to welcome Will and Jules onto La Bamba for this North Spanish leg. Will has sailed lots but Jules is new to sailing so we thought we would break them in gently with a short hop to Loredo.
This coast is notorious for swell and big rollers from the Atlantic and Bay of Biscay, but the weather remains very calm and the sea is beautifully flat. Perfect conditions for new crew!
We are a bit discombobulated to see a lot of cloud cover, as it has been pretty much blue skies all along – I have asked them very nicely to go to England and water the parched gardens there!
The coast here is very beautiful with high hills as the Pyrenees tumble into the sea.
Although no wind was forecast we enjoyed a light Westerly of 8-10 knots and as we were sailing into the wind for once that was enough for us to slide along at 4 knots.
We did more tacking getting out of the enormous harbour of Bilbao than we have in our entire trip! Will helmed most of the way and was in his element!
About two thirds of the way there we saw a fin. It wasn’t a dolphin! Will managed to get a video of it – we are pretty sure it was an Orca! So we really are in another country!
As you probably all know there’s a pod of Orcas who like to eat rudders on yachts but this one seemed to be on his own, or the others were under the water, and showed no interest in us whatsoever -which was good!
Typically the wind got a bit stronger as we approached the marina at Laredo!
They were very helpful at the marina and didn’t need all the ship’s documents as David had booked the marina on Navily where you can upload all the relevant paperwork – nice when these things actually work!
Laredo has an enormous sandy beach that slopes in gently, and there’s a harbour wall that all the boys in the area were jumping off to their great delight. Will, David and I all enjoyed a swim.
We had a stroll around old Laredo, it must have been a pretty little town before they built all the high rises along the beach.
There was a lovely old church, started in the 1200s, Santa Maria de la Asuncion, at the top of the hill with a beautiful portico with original carvings. More carvings were on the pillars inside.
There’s a statue to Diego del Barco, a Spanish hero against the French in the Peninsula war against Napoleon, in Spain it’s called the war of Independence.
Glorious sunshine returned and we relaxed and had dinner at the El Fantastico restaurant by the marina.
