“42:46.59N 9:03.38W”

1007 Miles since leaving Sandwich

Muros - Michal – Mirka – Orcas – and more Rain - 18 September 2022

The compressor is scheduled to arrive tomorrow some time and then we can make plans to move south. As if to synchronise with that the weather has turned fine, we have been tidying the boat up for the last two days and the wind is due to turn into the North from the middle of the week. It is all looking good except for the Orca attacks which have been occurring on a far too regular basis, but more of that later.

Michal and Mirka arrived on the bus from Santiago de Compostela in time for lunch on Tuesday. As per normal the rain was drizzling down and

the wind was gusting from the south.  We had a few beers in the corner café/bar and then took them aboard Spectra and made them welcome. It was unfortunate that we had promised them a few days sailing but that was not to be, the wind stayed resolutely in the south and the rain just kept pouring down. We did make the best of it though and in one semi gap in the weather we walked a few miles around the headland and had lunch in a beachside restaurant. It was rather nice having a couple of translators aboard as we didn’t have to do our usual guess, point, smile and eat whatever turns up whenever we order food.

A rainy walk to the next bay

Dramatic skies and an empty beach plus an equally dramatic action picture. Honestly, we walked around like that all day.

Pulpo / Octopus Hmmmmm

It was lovely having Michal and Mirka aboard and they fitted into the boat life very quickly. What can you do on a yacht when it is pouring with rain every day? We ate out, drank probably too much and had a good catch up on what we had all been doing since leaving nsc, but to be honest your options are limited. There was a brief weather window of about three hours on Thursday and I suggested that we use the opportunity to sail across to Portosin for a change of scenery. That was the plan discussed on Wednesday Morning as we ate breakfast watching the Polish yacht next to us set off for the south, in the rain of course. On Wednesday afternoon the same yacht was towed back in with its rudder bent after yet another Orca attack, that leaves 4 boats damaged in just this marina at the moment. The crew were all safe but visibly shaken and so I took them over a bottle of wine to help ease the pain. They said that the Orcas had attacked them for about 15 minutes and then left them alone. Unfortunately, by that time they had bent the rudder leaving the yacht only able to steer about 10 degrees to Port. The Orcas returned when they were under tow and kept pushing the boat from side to side and even lifting the bows from below, this caused the tow line to slip ripping the pulpit out of the deck and causing damage to their bow. 

Damaged bow fairlead, pulpit and rubbing strake on the “flying Polishman” and an Orca being “playful and interacting”

I am pretty certain that this was a deciding factor with Michal and Mirka and they decided that they really didn’t want to go sailing in the rain and with pressures of work calling them from Barcelona they decided to go home on Friday. This wasn’t a complete disaster as it did allow for us to all have a day out in Santiago de Compostela as Norma and myself decided to join them on the bus on Friday morning and spend the day with them before their flight. We filled in the last day in Muros with Norma having a pampering session before we went out and me helping Mirka with her navigation revision in the afternoon as she has a test in Barcelona on the 17^th.  On the last night we had the best meal yet at a restaurant in town with Michal and Mirka ordering clams followed by Octopus with Paprika for the third time in a row, Its nice but not that nice.

Norma takes advantage of having a beautician aboard and gets her fringe cut and I make a new rope thingy that will be very useful.

The bus ride was very comfortable, even though you still have to wear masks on public transport in Spain, and allowed us a good view of the countryside and coast. It really is so much greener here than we Brits are used to with our summer hols in the south of Spain. The next town along the coast to Muros is Ponzo do Cachon and as we drove past, we were greeted by the spectacle of dozens of women collecting cockles up to their waists in the cold Atlantic. It must be reasonably lucrative because there was a lot of them out there.

Cockle pickers Galician style

The journey to Santiago took just over an hour, added to that was a 20-minute walk and we were at the shrine of St James. I really don’t know what all the fuss is about with this Campino pilgrimage walk malarky, I was hardly out of breath and even Norma managed it with her dodgy foot. Anyway, slightly contentious statements apart, we did the tourist bit and visited the cathedral which was very impressive before having lunch in a very nice restaurant in one of the side streets. Norma had Secreto, I had a prawn and mushroom stir fry, while Michal and Mirka had, you guessed it, Clams followed by Pulpo with paprika, Number 4 on the trot!!

The monastery opposite the cathedral with a clear view down a tourists right ear.

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Lots of gold and the shrine of St James

And a rest in the park for the weary travellers after their epic pilgrimage.

Then after a quick snooze in the park for me it was back to the station to wish a fond farewell to Michal and Mirka. I really wish the weather had been kinder and we could have got some sailing in but that was not to be. It was great to meet up with them again and they are good company and a lovely couple to spend time with, even if they do make us feel old because they are sooooo much in lurve, xxxxx. Kissing in public it’s just not cricket!

Since saying goodbye to the ‘young lovers’, we have settled back into our wait for the compressor. Another boat was towed in yesterday after an Orca attack. This time it was a local yacht and the owner said he actually saw one Orca swimming away with a chunk of his rudder in its mouth, this is not funny at all. We have been busy over the weekend as I decided to fix my rails. When I re-decked Spectra we moved all of the stanchion posts out to new fittings that my son made on the bulwarks. This created about half a meter extra space along the side decks. To make even more room I ran the safety/guard wires along the outside of the stanchion posts which seemed like a very good idea at the time. In practice this has resulted in the creation of five points on each side, where the wire runs through loops on the stanchion poles, where the foresail sheets can get caught up on. And they do indeed get caught up on them, every single time you want to unfurl the sail or tack you have to go on deck and untangle the lazy sheet which gets very old very quickly. Simple solution, turn all of the stanchion posts round 180 degrees and run the wires along the inside. This has now been done along with polishing all of the stainless steel while I had the posts disassembled. Of course, it wasn’t quite that simple as each post had to be redrilled and then re-tapped into its new position. The first post snapped one of my two M6 taps, the second one snapped the second one and so it was a trip to the Ferritaria to buy an M6 Tap for stainless steel, no problem with my newfound Spanish skills. “Ola”, I said with heart felt confidence and then proceeded to point at things and scribble stuff on a bit of paper. 20 minutes later I am now the proud owner of three new M6 taps, what a clever boy am I. While I was doing that Norma stripped the boat out and gave it a damned good cleaning, in fact she was in such a cleaning frenzy having finished my job I stayed upstairs and scrubbed the fenders clean just to keep out of the way.

Today a Danish catamaran has moored next to us with a young family. On getting the now standard question of, “have you seen any Orcas”? from the other boat owners in the harbour they said no but they had met a couple of boats that were harassed at anchor near Vigo. Apparently in the night they felt sharp tugs and the boats lurched about as something large bumped into and played with their anchor chains. They didn’t pull loose, and it only went on for 10 minutes or so but pretty scary stuff in the dead of night all the same. In light of this I have with the help of Tony my son come up with a cunning plan, I am going to replace the split pin that holds the hydraulic ram in place on my steering gear with an R Clip. This will give me the chance to pull the clip out easily and thus disconnect my steering gear from the rudder completely. That in turn will allow the rudder to swing freely which will stop any internal damage to the hydraulic steering or the steering arm. In order to be able to access this quickly we will have to remove the mattress from the aft bed when we are sailing, then if we are attacked run below, pull out the pin and then cross our fingers and toes. I also have a diesel container on deck which I will pour into the water at the stern to discourage the Orcas. Not sure if that will work or if it is particularly PC but they started it.  On a slightly brighter note an English chap sailing a Halberg Rassey has just rapped on the hull and updated me that another yacht was attacked near La Caruna this afternoon, bad news for them but hopefully for us that means that the Orcas are heading North while we sneak South.

Anyway, we can’t do any of that until our compressor arrives which should be tomorrow – More on that in the next blog which if all goes well will not be from Muros.