Ribadesella to Gijòn 29nm
Monday 3 August
We said goodbye to pretty Ribadesella for the short sail round to the major port of Gijòn (pronounced Hee-hon). The sea was as flat as a sea can be.
With wind failing to get past 3 knots we motored admiring the mountains that we are now leaving behind. It’s a much hazier day today.
At the top of the mast our wind indicator arrow was spinning round and round and we listened into the local weather forecast on the radio – every bulletin ended with ‘light and variable’.
Luckily the wind filled in from behind (a Nor-Easterly), completely the opposite direction to yesterday (again!) and picked up to 8 knots which meant we could get Lily up!
Will helmed and quickly got the hang of following the dictates of Lily, who is a bit of a diva and requires your full attention.
We took Lily down as the port of Gijòn and its enormous beach hove into view.
After watching Will tie a fender knot, David was a bit sceptical about his bowline, but as you can see he has the skills:
Gijòn is a welcoming port and we met a couple of British boats here from Plymouth and Dartmouth who have come to see the eclipse. Apparently you get 6 more seconds of totality here than in Corunna!
We also met the team ‘Through the Blue’ who are rowing across the Atlantic in December in The World’s Toughest Row, a 3000 mile unassisted rowing race – they have already made it here from Northern France. We are now following them on FaceBook – they make me feel a lot less crazy!
It’s sadly our last night with Will and Jules, who have been great company and crew. We are hoping they have got a little of the La Bamba bug and will be back before long.
We went to an exceptionally good restaurant nearby, Farragua, which I would strongly recommend to anyone visiting Gijòn.
On the way back we enjoyed the free concert in the main square – they have them every night of the summer. Tonight it was an all female band called Girls to the Front with a wonderful girl-power repertoire of Beyoncé, Tina Turner etc – I hadn’t heard ‘These boots are made for walking’ for a very very long time! I particularly enjoyed the horn section – trumpet and tenor sax.
Tomorrow we stay in Gijòn so David can hopefully fix our anchor roller!