At Lanhydrock House on our ten year anniversary

Well the waiting is almost over and all is looking good (except our deck level starboard light has broke, but our tricolour is working fine) for leaving early Sunday morning to cross Biscay. We got our liferaft back this week, the cupboards are full, the tanks are full, all essential jobs are done and the weather is looking good with north-west going north-easterly force 4 winds for most of the way across. We may run into some slightly stronger winds as we approach Spain with a low over the land squeezing the winds between it and a high extending up to the UK. At the moment they are forecast to ease on Wednesday.

We still have problems with the fridge, although it is running better than it was having had it vacuumed out and regassed, but it gets stuck at a certain temperature and won't go any lower. We can live with that for a while until the winter when we have more time to get it sorted.

Our aimed for landfall is the Ria de Cedeira a few miles north-east of La Coruna. The ria is good for entering in most conditions, has a sheltered anchorage where we can catch up on sleep before heading to La Coruna for a few nights in the marina and some touristy stuff.

Having lost at least 6 weeks we're now intending to winter in north Portugal rather than southern Spain. We don't really want to rush through the rias so we'll have a month or so visiting them before heading for a winter home and if we want to go back it won't be far to head back north next year.

Despite being stuck due to our liferaft we've had some good times here catching up with friends, a night on the town for our 10 year anniversary, cycling across Cornwall and lots of kayak trips and walks. We've also been able to experience a decent British summer for the first time in a long time. I remember having taken 2 weeks holiday just after the boat had been delivered to Brighton back in 2004 and staring out of the hatch watching the rain bounce off the water for what seemed like days. We didn't manage to go anywhere then and having sailing plans scuppered by weather was something I took a long time to get used to. I'm still not sure I have!


Pitstop on our cycle to Portreath and back

I have mixed feelings about heading off; excitement for adventures to come but that is tempered with anxiety about the trip (4 days without getting off the boat = cabin fever!!) and a big dose of homesickness for family and friends. We did a 3 day crossing from Norway to Scotland which was fine with boredom only setting in on the last day, but we motored most of that due to light winds. I'm expecting Biscay to be a bit more boisterous so that might make the time pass more quickly. We have the Perseids meteor shower to look forward to which is peaking in the next few days so should make night watches a bit more interesting. We'll do 3 hour watches from 10pm to 10am which has worked well for us in the past, then be a bit more flexible during the day depending on how each of us is feeling.

We intend to post blog updates via the SSB whilst we're crossing but don't worry if you don't hear anything as there could be lots of simple reasons we don't get the chance to.

All being well we should be in Spain some time Wednesday. Fingers crossed the winds stay good for us.
Nichola