Ria de Corme

North-easterly four to five, fair, slight.  An almost perfect weather forecast appeared on our Navtex from the Spanish station at La Coruna for our hop round to Corme.  Our chosen anchorage had been well sheltered and our morning call from Ian and Jo at 10a.m. on channel 77 was expected.  We tucked into bacon eggs, tomato and fried potato before following them out almost an hour later.

Nil wind, mist, smooth; the actual weather we found ourselves in as we crossed the mouth of the Ria de La Coruna.  So much for our hopes to take some photos of the Torre de Hercules, the world’s oldest working light house, dating back to Roman times.  We snapped a few pictures despite the haze.  There were a number of yachts about, all probably taking advantage of the good weather forecast!   I lazily gazed into the water as we chugged along and casually remarked to Chris "Look, there's a shark."  He had to get me to repeat myself as he said he expected me to be more animated if what he thought he'd heard me say was true.  But I didn't really believe it myself and assumed that the fin shaped object protruding out of the water was just a bit of stick or weed.  A short while later, when I was sat propping up the mast, Chris called up from the cockpit "Elaine!! Another fin!"  I jumped to my feet and looked over the bow just as the creature flipped and disappeared.  I had glimpsed a round, blobby, body with long fins!  Certainly not a shark, but what was it?

 The mist soon became fog and our radar was duly switched on and Chris and I took up our lookout positions; Chris below in front of the screen and me standing in the cockpit staring out into the white blanket that surrounded us, George, our autopilot on the helm.  We overheard a number of yachts over the radio, some with radar helping others without.  We had not been able to get Zephyrus for sometime and assumed they were out of range, maybe going further on to Camarinas instead of Corme, which they had been contemplating.  Then another English yacht, Hula, kindly relayed a message for us and we found out they had gone into Corme after all, and they said the bar was already open to welcome us when we arrived!

The water temperature fell significantly as we rounded the corner, we assume due to being in the Atlantic waters rather than those of Biscay.  After two hours of very poor visibility, things began to improve but we could only just make out the coastline as we headed into Corme.  Beside Zephyrus there were a number of yachts already at anchor off the beach, but we tucked ourselves in neatly having gently motored round to find a good spot to drop the hook.