Freya & Us

After saying goodbye to our visitors we made our way 134 nautical miles west along the coast to Gijon, via two overnight anchorages in Santander and then near San Vincente de la Barquera. We motor sailed nearly the whole way with mostly very light winds either right behind or right in front of us. On the final run into Gijon, the weather was squally and the winds were extremely variable. For a short time (less than an hour) we got decent winds and managed to sail at between 7 and 8 Kts without the engine. Lorraine's smile was a mile wide despite the rain!!
Our anchorage in Santander was off a quiet beach and we had a peaceful night, disturbed only by the sound of the tractors cleaning the beach in the early hours. We planned to anchor/moor in San Vincente but when we arrived we found that every suitable spot in the bay had been taken by local boats, but tried dropping the hook alongside another sail boat. Unfortunately we couldn't get the anchor to set. We gave up before we got trapped by the falling tide and headed back east for a couple of miles to anchor off Playa de Oyambe, a wide beach where we spent a quiet and peaceful if slightly rolly night.
As we dropped the mainsail and started our final approach into Gijon we were approached by the Aduane launch and welcomed a friendly customs man aboard. After we completed the formalities and filled in his forms in triplicate (all with no English) we got ready to bid him farewell. His colleagues manoeuvred their launch alongside and as he went to step into their boat, the swell took the launch and he was left hanging from our guard rails in mid air. He wouldn't accept our help (to pull him back onboard) and as his colleagues tried a second time, they again had problems and would have squashed him between the launch and Freya if Paul hadn't fended the boat off. The launch went off to try again, but by now our man's arms gave out and he slipped very slowly into the water as his automatic life jacket inflated. The launch then tried to pull him from the water, but was still having problems as his life jacket was getting in the way. After removing his life jacket they eventually managed to get him aboard. Amazingly he still seemed to be in good humour, laughing and smiling with the only casualties being his dignity and mobile phone. We weren't sure what the penalty would be for drowning the customs officer but so far no come back!