My god, we were up and out REALLY, REALLY early (4am) in order to cover the 90 or so miles to Gijon. Two other British yachts followed as we left Santander in convoy, Flirtie initially taking the lead working her way out through the numerous port and starboard hand markers which weren't easy to identify as the lights from the town were more colourful and brighter. All we can say is thank goodness for chart plotters because they certainly make the job an awful lot easier.

As we came out of the bay and started to head West past some commercial ships at anchor there was a slight swell but this was short lived and almost disappeared by the time we crossed a few depth contours and were back in deep water again. Incredibly, only a few miles off from land you can be sailing in a thousand meters of water.



A fishing trawler gave us a surprise as he motored immediately across our path and dropped his nets over the back making us slow down in order to allow his nets to sink. We have a name for him but can't put it in print!

With absolutely no wind, we motored all the way, keeping ourselves entertained by watching the rugged coastline whilst listening to numerous 'classics' on the IPod.


hidden 'Picos de Europa'

A few dolphins passed by on a mission and were not interested in playing with us. We had a near miss with a Sunfish who appeared right in front of our bow but he thankfully dived swiftly underneath.

Surprisingly there was a lot of floating debris; a whole tree complete with its roots and a three meter square sheet of plastic mesh that would have done some serious damage.

The day remained dry until we arrived at the welcome pontoon when it started to rain. Like Santander the office was shut (even though the almanac said it should be open) so we reported in the next morning when we were allocated a berth on the visitors' pontoon and once again our ropes were kindly taken by a 'marinero'.

A few minutes later whilst still tying Flirtie up we noticed a man loitering - it was customs. We provided him with a copy of our customs form from Santander but he still insisted on filling in a new, identical form ignoring most of the information from the previous form - appearing to doubt its accuracy! So now we have two customs forms. At this rate we could end up with a customs form at every port!

Total distance this season: 326.59 nautical miles