Freya & Us

Before we returned the hire car, we headed west of Gijon to “reccy” our next stop at Cudillero about 45km by road from Gijon. This was either good planning or a mistake. The swell was running hard into the harbour and made the entrance look somewhat interesting! We planned our approach and were confident that we could do it, but I (Paul) had nightmares about crashing into the rocks the night of our reccy.
Anyway we set off from Gijon after carefully planning our arrival time to minimise the swell and ensure we had adequate tide beneath us. We arrived a couple of hours before high water with a predicted 4m of water beneath the keel at the shallowest point of the entry channel. As we approached the harbour entrance, there was 2 - 3m of swell running in the outer approach, but this was accelerated down the narrowing channel. Lorraine did a great job of keeping the boat dead centre in the 10m wide channel as we surfed past the starboard breakwater (towards another wall) and then executing a 90 degree turn to starboard into the now much narrower channel, flanked between rocks with breaking waves on both our starboard and port sides. Lorraine timed the turn perfectly and we made a text book entry into the inner harbour which was flat calm.
We picked up a fore and aft mooring buoy in the fishing harbour with no problem and went ashore in the dingy to complete the formalities with the harbour master. After a short stroll around the very steep and old village and an hour watching the amazing waves crashing over the entrance and breakwaters we retired for a well earned beer and a good night’s sleep before we do it all again in reverse in the morning!