La Rochelle to Bilbao, 181nm
Monday-Tuesday 28-29 July
We left La Rochelle at 8am for our overnight crossing to Spain. Because of all the fires (and also a shooting range) we have decided to cut off the corner and head straight to Bilbao.
And sadly Sam is leaving us for now, so it’s good to get the big crossing done before he goes.
The French call the Bay of Biscay the Golfe du Gascoigne, strangely they don’t insist on this for all of our maps.
We could see some haze, the only telltale sign of the dreadful fires near Bordeaux.
The winds were light and we alternated between some nice sailing in a pretty breeze of 9-10 knots from a Northerly direction, skipping along with Lily up, and motoring when it died.
Only two dolphins came to say hello, and a small bird, I’m pretty sure it was a turnstone, -it flew round and round the boat about a dozen times as if he was going to land, but he didn’t. He was a long way from land.
The sea was so calm we opened the table out for our pasta dinner – thanks David!
We lowered Lily at sunset just in case the wind got up in the night. It didn’t.
We did 2 hourly night shifts which meant one on, one as backup and one off watch, so with nothing happening we basically had 4 hours off, 2 hours on. I’m a bad sleeper so didn’t get much but I’m hoping to get better at it for our big Atlantic crossing.
With the morning came the breeze and we were very glad to get the engine off at last as a West wind rose steadily from 8 knots up to gusts of 21 by the time we made port.
Seeing Spain emerge from the haze (maybe caused by all these fires) made us all feel that we were definitely coming to a new country. Thar be hills here!
I can speak French pretty well and have some Italian, but I know very little Spanish, so I asked Olivia for useful phrases! Thank you Liv, so much better than duo lingo!
The first marina we tried didn’t even answer us on phone or radio so we went to the Getxo one which had very helpful staff who caught our ropes.
The office staff were very happy to see David’s beautiful boat document file – they do bureaucracy well here.
We are going to miss Sam, a great sailor and friend – he has a rendezvous in Canada and Alderney before he rejoins La Bamba.
I think I’ve forgotten how to wash up!