Hurrah for Grandad driving over 1250 miles to visit us, with his car laden with spare water filters, pipes, numerous Amazon deliveries of boat bits, you name it and a Tesco order of the boys favourite foods. So it was triple excitement all round. Thank you for the post too, huge thanks to Helen and the Croft crew for the hoodie for Hugo for leaving pre-prep. He was over the moon to see everyone’s names on his jumper.

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Time to go off exploring and sailing with Grandad for a week 😀⛵️🏝☀️😎⚓️

The water and beaches of Isla de Arousa and Isla Ons are amazing and we’ve parked the school lessons (for a bit) whilst we just have fun on the beaches. If you are cruising in the area, do stop at these anchorages as they are superb. I’m pretty sure the cover photo from the pilot book for Atlantic Spain and Portugal is taken from this very spot.

The boys either snorkel, swimming for ages or take themselves off in the dinghy. Both are proficient at rowing now, with Felix’s creating his own underarm rowing technique to make up for any size disadvantage!

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The excitement is mounting with Grandad arriving for a visit and the boys are ecstatic. It’s better to be on a beach rather than a yacht with two very excited boys, bless.

Our yacht seems to be a magnet for fishermen. No sooner than we have anchored and settled down for the night when the hum of ‘Viveiro’s’ appears and we seem to get surrounded by dropped oyster pots in a web of floats and lines. No chance of us motoring off then! But by morning the hard working fishermen normally reappear and dutifully collect them all. But today we had diving fishermen this close!

They have a tank of air on their small rickety wooden boat, drape a long hose over the side and jump in. Hugo and Felix were fascinated and wanted to join in. There was also a free diver diving around us too. So here’s our mini fishermen….(with that much buoyancy the clams were certainly going to be safe for another day!)

Hugo swam around following the free diver, who kindly gave him a prized Galician delicacy of razor clam and some large clams too. Amazing what was beneath our boat!

Building with bamboo, well that’s a lesson I definitely can do! We found a lovely quiet anchorage (just north of pta de Cabio, which is south of Caramiñal in Ría Arosa) with beaches backed with bamboo. The beach had numerous fallen bamboo sticks, so the Halls got to work. We have been meaning to buy a paddle board but just haven’t found the right one, so this would be the next best thing??!! (Honest kids!!)

Felix and I build the prototype and left Hugo and Daddy for the mass construction. Then Hugo went punting on the raft into the distance, what could go wrong?!

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Luckily everyone managed to get back to shore for bridge and den building too 😎🏝☀️

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So homeschooling is tough, okay it has highs and lows. One lesson the boys have been begging for is art, specifically painting. I’m not really a mess person, let alone paint/glitter in a confined space that constantly moves! I finally relented and set up a wonderful art station on the beach. The boys were elated and merrily painted shells, driftwood, stones, pine cones and anything we could find. They were so happily absorbed in painting, I thought I might relax and read my book. Err oops, see what happened next!! Rule one of teaching learnt, remain in charge and present!!!!

This ría is stunning, with gorgeous old fishing towns, ancient stone buildings and narrow cobbled streets. There seems to be a fiesta or party everywhere we go and everyone is so friendly and helpful. We were slightly startled by copious amounts of gunfire (has war broken out??) but soon found out there was a battle reenactment going on, with added slightly dodgy fireworks. Never a dull moment in Spain in July! We visited some stunning anchorage’s and swam in some slightly warmer water..

When you look at Spain the western most point jutting into the Atlantic is Cape Finisterre and one to sail with caution for tides and winds. Think of the famous surfing posters with gigantic waves, yup it’s here. So we timed it well but even so the Atlantic swell was a bit brutal and took its toll on our youngest. Felix in the seasick position, bless. Once round we were fine and had a lovely sail down wind.

Everyone’s talks about three Rías, but when you look at the charts there are about six! So we are exploring the lot from the north down including some islands and bird sanctuaries too. A short light wind window allowed us to moor off Islas Sisargas bird sanctuary, which was lovely. The boys walked to the lighthouse and found a geocache only found once before two years ago. It is remote here.

Even the paths were less trod…anyone seen Hugo????

Then we sailed into our first ría, Ría de Camariñas. This was lovely and protected from the Atlantic swell and we moored off a quiet local beach at Punta Lingundia. Beautiful location, only slight problem was that it appeared like someone had dropped a large glacier upstream as the water was brain numbingly freezing! No swimming for me then!

Time for some exploring ashore before heading to our next ría, Ría de Muros, past the infamous Cape Finisterre.

Sailing this coastline was fast, with the wind behind us and the Atlantic swell and tide with us we were surfing down huge waves and hit speeds of 10.6 kts (we are only a sailing boat)! We promptly changed our passage plan and went whizzing past Ribadeo and Foz and sailed to Viveiro whilst we had such a good wind. It means we are really now not too far from La Coruña (starting round the top corner of Spain) and getting into the stunning Rias everyone keeps telling us about. After enjoying a stable night in a marina after the washing machine of the Atlantic the previous day we had a quiet morning doing school work and journals before the promise of exploring the old town later. Thank goodness we did. It turns out it was a mini fiesta, a type of medieval revival festival thing. All the cobbled streets and buildings were adorned with flags and market stalls. We ate paella in the market square and were entertained by fire eaters, acrobats, dancers and bands. It was amazing and the boys’ eyes were out on stalks. Great fun for all.

In true Brit style we ended up walking round whilst everyone was having a siesta, the party for the evening will only start and just get going at 9pm. We are still trying to adjust our ‘Gina’ clock! 😂. Having anytime when the boys are not awake is almost impossible. Which makes catching up with boat mending, admin, planning and blogs difficult!!

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Russell and Pete (from Oyster Moon) have gone into town for the fiesta tonight and I’m hosting movie night with four children. Luckily Vicki came over too bringing G&T (and the last of some treasured fever tree tonic), which we enjoyed watching the sunset on our beach anchorage at Playa Del Covas (outside Viveiro). A great day for all.

We are not sure if it’s us, the pilot book or it was lost in translation, but this was a tricky mooring with diddly facilities at Luarca. We arrived ahead of Oyster Moon and found no moorings or pontoons, so dropped an anchor and reversed up to this massive sea wall, whereupon I had to row ashore taking a line, scale the most enormous ladder, loop our line round a bollard, climb back down the ladder and row back to the yacht with the line (not loosing it at any point). A lot easier said than done I can tell you. Whilst Russell tried to reverse in a straight line against wind and tide so that the line was long enough to get back to our boat. Let’s say that tested the marriage vows! Now I wished we’d packed some G&T!

Despite the traumatic arrival the next day we explored ashore and it was a sweet Spanish fishing village, who seemed most surprised to see a visiting yacht arrive. We now know why!

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We had stopped at Luanco enroute earlier which is a delightful beach stop for lunch (and recommended) but unfortunately not protected enough for an overnight stay. For those sailing this coast I’d give Luarca a wide berth unless you have a love of climbing long rusty crab riddled ladders with the roar of the Atlantic behind you and your husband shouting hurry up. It felt like Lara Croft episode as I climbed the ladder with the rope between my teeth…..

The next day we set sail for Viveiro which I have checked via google earth (stuff this pilot book) really does have a marina and a beach! Phew.