Galicia to Portugal – A week of sweet and sour

Apologies for the long time since our last update. The summary is that we have had a fantastic time in Galicia… and a terrible start of our stay in Portugal. We’ll come back to that.

First, the highlights. We have much enjoyed Galicia. Climate, nature, culture, food and company have all been outstanding. We started off in A Coruña with celebrating a successful crossing of the Bay of Biscay with a good tapas dinner the first night followed by a few days of boat school, beach time and exploring the city. One highlight is the famous Hercules lighthouse with a magnificent location on top of a cliff, guiding sailors from the Atlantic and the north to a safe landfall more than a millennium back. In Galicia, the density of northern Europeans has increased significantly to our great pleasure, and we have met several new friends from Sweden, Norway and Denmark and Germany who we have followed for a few stops. In Coruna, we met the great Norwegian family and fellow ARC+ sailors on the catamaran Ocean Crosser who we joined up with for almost a week.

Our next stop was Camariñas where we found a nice anchor spot in the bay just next to a pretty beach where we played football with other cruiser kids before we continued our journey south after two nights. On our way to Muros, we passed most of the notorious Costa da Morte (Coast of Death) and luckily, we all survived to our humble gratefulness. We rounded Cap Finisterre and the most westward point of the Spanish mainland Cap Touriñán in fantastic sailing conditions with good winds, blue skies, and moderate sea. Only minor seasickness onboard so the mood was easily elevated by the distraction of a whole group of dolphins. Once in Muros, we hung out with the Ocean Crosser family and another great couple onboard the Danish boat Notorious (so far, we haven’t managed to reveal that the name is well deserved but we are watching them closely of course).

Muros is a pretty Galician town with a small beach and a cozy harbor run by the passionate Harbor Master Juan who organized both car rental for as well as a welder who helped us repair a cracked bracket in our pulpit. We took a road trip to Santiago de Compostela and learned about the apostle Saint James/Jakob the Older, the pilgrim route El Camino, and a lot more. We considered it a school excursion and took the opportunity to discuss the Christian churches among other things.

We left Muros and headed south to Isla Cies, part of the Atlantica National Park in southern Galicia. We had a great time and met three other Scandinavian families onboard the boats Greta, Linnea, and Vildensky along with our, by now old friends, on Ocean Crosser and Notorious. We enjoyed the beautiful island and hung out on the beach.

Our last stop in Galicia, Baiona was another cool small city overlooking the Atlantic and Ria de Vigo. We anchored in the bay and took the dinghy to the beach and to town to stock up on our food supply that had been running on red for a couple of days. This is easily noticed when “pasta with something”-lunch is served for too many days in a row.

After two nights in Baiona we noticed to our devastation that all of Galicia was north of us but we were excited to try to conquer a new country – Portugal. This leads us to the low of the week… On the 30th we motored most of the way to Viana do Castelo. It was a nice and easy 35 NM cruise where Felix ran the show, navigated, set sails, and brought us safely underway. We were excited to meet our new friends on Greta and Linnea. The wind picked up as we approached the harbor, Martin was at the helm, and to our horror our engine died just as we were about to make the final 180-degree turn in the inner harbor basin, with boats in all directions and windy conditions. We did all we could to try to save the day with the rudder, bow thruster, and fenders but our maneuverability is limited without the engine, and we ran out of space. To our devastation, we hit the side of our friends’ boat with our heavy bow. Frenesi was drifting further in the wind but was then towed to the dock with the help of friends and fellow sailors in the harbor. But sadly, the boat Greta was damaged. It is a shocking and sad episode for all of us and it is hard to digest how this event could play out given the absurdly low likelihood of the engine quitting at this very moment. We are grateful that nobody is hurt but given that there is sooo much effort, money, and emotions invested in an adventure like this, it is tough for all people involved. We feel so sorry for Daniel and Johanna on Greta and are so impressed by how generously they navigate the situation.

We all woke up feeling low this morning but after doing everything in our power to minimize disruption for Johanna and Daniel as well as taking care of ourselves and Frenesi, our mood is on an upward trend. Daniel and Johanna have a plan forward, we have located the cause of the engine disruption – the inlet hose to the fuel pump had somehow come loose. We look forward to many better days in the coming weeks. More about that the next time.