Santander

Our voyage to Santander turned out to be one of our best sails so far.  This was unexpected because we rose to discover the wind on the nose.  Despite the direction of the wind, against which we would have to tack the whole way, it was blowing at a steady ten knots and we could zip along close-hauled with all our sail pulling us along beautifully.

Sailing to windward also has the advantage of taking you close in to shore at the end of each landward tack.  With steep cliffs and dramatic gullies perforating the shoreline we sailed in until our depth gauge told us it was time to turn about right beneath the rugged scenery.

Today’s wind was also a real gentleman and died away just as we approached our anchorage off Santander, leaving us moored in a glassy calm to reflect on the days journey.

For three months we have barely seen any other British yachts.  Such events occur seldom enough that we have written about them with great excitement in this very web site.  Yet now that we are out of the clutches of Biscay we are coming across quite a number.  We were not surprised then to find two British yachts already at anchor as we crept around the Peninsula de la Magdalena and dropped our own hook off the beach.

An hour later we dropped our anchor for the third and last time.  The trouble with no wind is that yachts at anchor do not betray the position of their hook terribly well.  And so it was that we shuffled ourselves between the shore and the two existing yachts until we were happy that we could all swing around quite safely.

For the second time in successive stops we failed to go ashore, for we were keen to take advantage of the continuing good weather and head further west.  We planned our next trip to Ribadesella, sixty miles away.  This would be a big trip psychologically as we would be crossing both four degrees and five degrees west in a single leg.  The arrival would be a tricky one too, for after travelling these sixty miles we had a two-hour window before high tide within which it is safe to enter over a sandy bar at the entrance to the river.  If we missed this we would have to travel on even further.