Throughout Spain, Galicia is known as the region of a thousand rivers and most of those rivers vent into estuaries that feed into the sea through the many "Rias" or bays.
Wanda is exploring some of these Rias and enjoying some warm sunny weather.
The first of these is Corme. We are rediscovering the fun and simplicity of anchoring rather than finding marina berths.
Wanda always feels so much more comfortable at anchor. She is held only by the chain rode and bobs with the small waves, swells or wash from passing boats in the way she was designed, completely different to being tied to a pontoon or the land with warps that snatch and hold her with unnatural restraint.
After a very relaxing couple of nights we moved on the the next Ria, called Camarinas.
Again we are anchored. Anchoring should be relatively stress free, both when finding a space to "drop the hook" and also when raising anchor to leave. As we arrive we often prevaricate and discuss at length where to drop; considering the depth, state of tide, positions of other boats etc, then how much chain to pay out, more chain means better holding but then the swinging circle is larger, if space is tight, its a compromise. However, this is normal and has the advantage that there is not so much close manoeuvring as in a marina; with the inherent risk of hitting things. Best of all, its normally free!
Leaving from anchor is also relatively easy, often the mainsail can be hoisted whilst still on the anchor, because the boat will always be oriented head to wind, which is ideal for hoisting sail. The chain is winched up into the chain locker with the electric winch, this also involves what we call "splonking", I've no idea what the technical sailing term is, but as the chain piles into a pyramid in the locker it needs knocking over before it blocks the hawse pipe, it needs "splonking". It gets splonked as each 10m of chain is recovered. One of us raises the anchor and splonks whilst the other helms. Again its relatively easy compared to manoeuvring out of a tight marina berth.
After a couple of nights here its on to Cabo Finisterre.
Yep Finisterre is also the name of the sea area used in the shipping forecast. Its lovely here and we will stay a few days. Today we walked up to the lighthouse, along with a surprising number of tourists. It slowly dawned on us what all these people were up to. They are pilgrims! Finisterre is the site of a Christian pilgrimage and the town is full of pilgirms. All with rucksacks and walking sticks and dangling shells, many have trousers that unzip to turn them into shorts. In order to fit in we quickly found sticks, but without the shells and zippy trousers we were fooling no one.
On return to the village, we had a long seafood lunch at a shoreside restaurant where we could see Wanda peacefully bobbing at anchor, then a leisurely row back for an afternoon nap.
Roast chicken and salad for tea.