Back in Vigo - ready to go
08 May 2015 | Marina Davila Sport, Vigo, Spain
Chris - weather: sunny with cloudy spells
After a busy week moving Janine, Carolyn's mother, into her new place we set off again for the next phase of the trip. Easyjet did a good job again and only a ten minute wait for the car this time. As we had the right destination in the Sat Nav the journey took the normal hour and a half so we were at the Marina by about 10.30 Spanish time (one hour ahead of UK). Late night beers and the remainder of the sandwiches bought at Gatwick went down well.
After a late start, Jeff and Chris set to work on putting the mainsail back on the boat whilst Sandra and Carolyn looked after provisioning. They clearly had heard the guy's prayers even across the miles to the supermarket as they returned with two 24 packs of beer (and a few food items). With the Main rigged and tested by raising it at the berth to about 75% up (the wind decided to get up as we were doing this and prevented a full raise) we relaxed into a few of the local beers with pork in mustard for dinner.
On Thursday we had to return the car to the other side of Vigo and then went for a coffee in a local cafe, very good and as usual in Spain, served with small snacks, in this case, churros - sweet fried batter sticks. Jeff also indulged in a tortilla, a potato and onion fried omelette. After a few more preparations we went for the first sail of the year. With the new crew we practised tacks and gybes across the Ria de Vigo for a couple of hours, the wind, which had been light decided to treat us to a bit of a show and reached 22 knots at times- but we wanted to test the reefing gear anyway. Splice behaved well and other than a few tweeks her sailing systems are set to go. Dinner was chilli with a few Estrella (the local lager). We said goodbye to Roberto, the marinerio who has been very helpful during our stay in the marina, true to form he took our outboard fuel can off and filled it for us as we had forgotten to do so earlier.
Tomorrow the plan is to leave Marina Davila Sport for the anchorage at the Isles de Cies. It's only about 7 miles away so an easy sail and hopefully a good anchorage asn the weather is supposed to be quiet for the next few days. We have a booking to stay for three nights and hope we can do some walking in the nature reserve/bird sanctuary. There's no wifi there so we will be quiet for a few days!
The picture shows Carolyn doing the in-depth boat briefing with new crew Jeff and Sandra.