Nazare, Portugal

Before posting pictures from boatyard actions from Nazare (yes, Kiwi is on dry land in this biblical place since couple of hours), I just have to introduce the great new toy of hours: Zuma Jay 7.5 feet longboard bought second hand in Porto. The fascination of the process of learning wave surfing comes from it being eminently difficult, but at the same time very rewarding and addictive.  The whole sport is ridiculous: the goal is to stand couple of seconds on the board and look cool. To be able to have a try, you need to fight your way out through breaking waves exploding on you and dragging you and the board back towards the shore. Being able to stand on the board on a wave requires vigorous paddling, balance, right timing, a lot of practice. Even the best performance ends in being tumbled around in the wave and swallowing liters of seawater. The few seconds of success you might have, are worth all the fight and misery! And the waves never end, there is always another shot!

Viana Castello - Portugal it is

Crowling down the Iberian coast

Philipp and Chrissie managed to bring Kiwi around Cabo Finisterre and picked Sanja up on a beach in Corrubedo. They could report some great sailing, but also experiences including womittings. Just when we had mastered the skill of somehow ordering food and beverages in Spanish, it's time to change country. Two days ago Kiwi crossed the border to Portugal, where Viana Castello is our first port of call.

Viana Castello happens to have the third most beautiful scenery in the world (according to National Geographic from 1926), which combined with thick fog and lazynes brought us to stay in the town for a day and spend some time with one of our new hobbies: tourism.

The coastline has changed from Galician rocky Rias (fjords) to endless beach, with little shelter. The next weeks we'll have to bring Kiwi in to build marinas in river deltas in stead of natural anchorages. Next destination is famous Porto, where Kiwi will get well deserved attention: new antifouling and treatment for her rust spots. Chrissie strategically abandoned the ship just before we brought out the angle grinder and returned to stable ground in Vienna. We'll definitely miss his endless Spanish omelets and otherwise great help onbord

A rear picture: Kiwi leaving the port of La Coruna handsome and on sail

While the boys where sailing,  Sanja made a mini-pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela on bike

Galician beach

Also sandy beaches can be interesting: new discovery of wave surfing has made us more liberal towards these geological features

Spirits are high and sun burns severe!

.

Update

...to tell that Philipp and Chrissie sail (and womit)  their way towards Capo Finnisterre (lands end in northwest Spain). Sanja took the challenge to race Kiwi on land by bicycle, and meet the guys in Pontevedra. There seems to be a lot of time for sightseeing along the biking route (currently in Santiago de Compostela), from what I hear, in addition to the crew being sea ill, the boat is entangled in fishing buoys and no fast progress is to be expected. It's great to be in South!

Biscay pictures

The whole trip so far has been affected by a certain rush to reach Biscay before autumn with more likelihood for stronger winds. Ironically, when finally crossing the notorious Bay, we suffered from lack of wind rather than too much of it. We ended up spending six days on something that could be done in three. We had north winds, which are yes, the right ones thinking of our direction of sailing.The sail shop in the UK managed to send our new working jib to a wrong address, and it never arrived to us in Ireland before departure. Our wardrobe, when it comes to head sails, was little limited. This caused us to sail with the wind very inefficiently: We were basically tacking our way down in less than 5 m/s wind almost all the way. We would have walked faster!

The crossing was a good experience in many ways, thanks to Christophe and Alice from France who supported us in sailing, navigation, on helm, did almost all kitchen work. The permanent crew of Kiwi suffer in times quite seriously from sailing tiredness and distorted perspective on their adventure. Arrival to Spain marks for us a change, end of hurrying, more time to discover the coast and less time in the cockpit.

In addition to the light winds during the crossing from Ireland, we had the best possible weather, with beautiful sunsets (and I guess sun rises, but not  during my watch ; )), beutiful thunderstorms in the far horizont, moderate waves. We were regularly visited by dolphins, which sometime rode in the bow wave of Kiwi. There were even dolphin youngsters and we saw wales too. 

As an additional adventurous aspect, Kiwi’s start engine broke two days before arrival to Spain. By fiddling with cables and by using Ismo’s screw driver trick, we got the engine started and drove safely to port. A new solenoid is installed, and the engine starts better than ever.  

So where is the wind?

Alice in action

An escape

Christophe and a double rainbow

Baby dolphin

It’s amazing to have Kiwi, the same boat which I’ve shovelled so much snow from last winter in Tromsø, now bathing under the Spanish hot sun. Kiwi deserves a little break here in La Coroña and so does the crew. Christophe and Alice travelled back to Paris, Philipp headed to Portugal to meet some friends yesterday, Sanja works on removing the tons of salt from the boat's interior, clothing and everything and makes minor maintenance.