After a really pleasant time in Vilagarcia, we set off to head southwards to the Ria de Pontevedra. Plan A was to try an anchorage on the south side of Isla de Arosa (only 5 miles) and then south into the next Ria on Thursday. Plan B (if that was not any good) was to aim for San Vicente, just round the bottom headland from the Ria and Plan C was the big drawing pin in the chart table.
We left around noon-ish and got to Ensenada sur de San Xulian (on the south side of ......) after a gentle drift and threading ourselves through the viveros. Unfortunately what looked like a good anchorage in the Pilot Book was a bit industrial - not quite as bad as Grangemouth - but not what we wanted. So onto plan B.
We headed back out through the viveros and south towards the bottom of the Ria. The weather forecast was 15knts northerly but with a 4m swell outside the Ria (compared with the usual 2m). This is the after effect of one of the big depressions hitting Biscay (and you lot up there!!). Anyway, as a result I feared that San Vicente would be too lumpy to anchor so onto plan C. First attempt with the drawing pin put us half way to the Azores (not where we wanted to go) and the 2nd and 3rd not really that much better (must use a more detail chart for this). With the wind northerly, our options were more limited so plan Z was put into practice and we ended up in Ribeira (still in the Ria de Arosa) after a nice pleasant afternoon sail. There is a nice beach to anchor off just to the north of the harbour area - which does have a fairly sizable marina as well as a busy fishing port.
(the view to the north)
We dropped anchor in 15-20knts of wind in 6m of water and settled down to wait for the wind to go down so we could take the dinghy ashore. There were another 4 boats in the anchorage (one French, one Dutch, one Spanish and one British). We cooked and ate on the boat and gave up the idea of going ashore as the wind continued to howl. The holding was reported to be very good (sand) and it turned out it was. The wind finally died around 11pm so it was a relative quite night apart from the swell from outside the Ria making it a bit lumpy and then the constant fishing boat traffic making it very lumpy every half hour.
(the view to the south)
The weather on Wednesday was good blue skies but the wind was cold, I guess as a result of the cool weather earlier in the week. Thursday dawned in a similar way with it quite cold. We upped anchor around 11 ish and had to put a fleece on (still in shorts though!) for the first time sailing for a while. The anchor came up no problem with little weed.
While I was pulling up the anchor, we were dive bombed by one of those big yellow planes that swoop down to pick up water from the sea to drop on forest fires, or just drop it back in the sea on whoever is below when they are practicing. I guess it was around half a mile away. 3 minutes later is was back, a few hundred yards away. I trust they have good radar. By the time I had run for the camera it had disappeared. You will have to wait for the next blog entry to see where we ended up next.
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