Diah Gunawan

The weather was mostly clear with westerly wind initially 10 knots but decreasing quickly to 5-8 knots. We only had. Sails set for 20 mins after leaving the river mouth before the wind dropped. The sea was calm for most of the passage. The Pico de Europa mountains were pretty being capped in snow. There are impressive geological formations along the coast near C de Ajo. The outer sea wall of Bilbao port is impressive but looks battered.

Wind NW up to 25kts and seas up to 2.5m. We weighed anchor and left Candas harbour shortly after a rain shower had passed over. The morning was cloudy but it cleared in the afternoon. We had little wind initially but picked up and we set sail at 08:45. The wind strengthened and we put in 2 reefs at 11:00. We did not see many other boats. The 9m monohull Geisha passed us doing 1-2kt more than us as we approached San Vincent. The entrance into Ria San Vicente was quite tense as we had some swell, a 20kt crosswind and 2-3kt current against us but once inside it became tranquil. Finding a spot with more than 1.5 m at lw proved hard with the tidal flow and crosswind and in the end I became fast in 0.7m. We will have to wait until 01:40 to refloat and finish anchoring.

Largely unfavourable conditions to sail so spent 90% using motors. We had strong headwinds and a choppy sea after Cabo de Bares and later approaching Ribadeo so were forced to use both motors. Tacking was not an option because we wanted to arrive at Ribadeo at around high slack water. We also had 2m swell from the NW during the night but that did not cause problems as it had a very long period.