La Coruña - Camariñas

We left La Coruña two days ago heading for Muros, the only place we had gotten a spesific recomandation for before we came to Spain. Our typical luck made us leave La Coruña on a day where we had a moderate gale straight in our faces. As we are humble beings we decided to find shelter and ended up in the litle village where we are now. On our way we tried to fish, but got interrupted by dolphins and sharks. And as we want neither of those on our hook we didn´t get any fish this time either.

Our plan today was to wake up at ten o´clock, check the weather and finish the discussion we started yesterday on wether we should use the engine to reach Muros in daylight or wait for the wind that was predicted this evening and set sails through the night, hopefully reaching Muros tomorrow morning. This time I´m afraid Arild is gonna suffer in the democratic prosess and we´ll start the engine pretty soon. (At least after I wake them...)

Beards gone.

In case you were wondering how the bearded part of the crew look without the beards.

Dover - La Coruña

We spent a couple of days in Dover to wait for the southwesterly wind to decrease. Our course from Dover to Falmouth was W-SW, and SW Force 7 was not too tempting. We left Dover Marina in the morning Sunday 14th. Soon a pidgeon came on visit, landing on the solar panel, looking a bit confused. After a minute or so, it discovered that the hatch was open and it flew bravely into the galley. It found it's favourite place in the aft port berth, and seemed to stay for the night. The company was nice, but we decided to let it go. Afterwards, we found some leftovers on David's clothes.

For the next day and night wind from north brought us to Isle of Wight, where we moored in Cowes Yacht Haven and took the Hi-speed ferry to Southampton. We had heard that Southampton was one of the best places to buy cheap boat equipment, and we needed another anchor, rope, radar reflector and other stuff. However, the trip was a disappointment, and the conclusion was that we should have bought everything before we left Norway.

Back in Cowes, we had to wait for highwater because of the strong tidal current in The Needles, the sound between western Isle og Wight and the mainland. The wind decreased and during the night we had only very light winds, 5 to 10 kt. Then we had to use the engine, as many times before. So far, we have had either to much wind, the wind against or no wind at all. Nice to have an engine then. Actually we want to sail, but because of lack of time, we have used the engine whenever the sailing was too slow. After Biscay this will hopefully change. We now have the luxury to wait for the winds to become beneficial before we set sails.

In the morning the 17th we arrived Falmouth, a nice town that reminded us of places futher south. The bay was really crowded with sailing boats, but because our dinghy was still in its bag on deck, we found a marina. We went to a chart dealer to buy maps and pilot books for Brazil, where we intend to go. After telling him that we were to cross the Biscay, he looked up the weather forcast for us and told us that today was a perfect time to go. Northerly winds for the rest of the week. -You should go now, go now! he told us. We agreed and went to the supermarked to buy food. We also bought a fishing rod for catching BIG fish,like tuna and dorado. After only eight ours in the nice town of Falmouth, we left for the Biscay, maybe the leg we had feared most of all. A lot of stories have been told about the bad weather and erratic waves that can be very high.



We had chosen a westerly course aiming for a waypoint west of Cabo Finnisterre. This course would bring us clear og the shipping lane and also the shallow waters futher east. The first night we had calm, and we were motoring until dusk. Luckily the wind increased and we could set sails. After listening to BBC4 on longwave, we epected a NW Force 6 during the next night. When eating dinner, we saw dark cumulonimbus clouds approching and decided to finish before reefing. We almost made it, but as the clouds arrived, the wind increased, and soon we had a steady Force 7 from behind. The waves built up imediately, but we tried to keep our course. During the night, we had an average wind of 30 kt, gusting 38 kt, and the strongest wind experiences so far. We steered by hand, because we thought it was necessary, but putting 'Bernt' in work the evening after, we found that the windrudder would steer even better the we could. So for the rest of the crossing, 'Bernt' brought us safely through the waves, that sure were the biggest any of us had experienced.

We made 7,5 kt speed at the most, a speed not often experienced in 'Bonanza'. 153 nautical miles during 24 hours is also our best so far. Then it should be mentioned that we are careful sailors. Our philosophy is that too little sail is better than too much. The wind decreased slowly and the conditions allowed everybody some sleep. The last day, we saw some dolphins around the boat. Soon, some friends came by, and then they were about 15 swimming around 'Bonanza' having fun! Fun for us also, trying to take pictures. It was amazingly hard to catch them with the camera.

Approaching La Coruña, the wind increased again, and that made mooring a bit difficult in the exposed marina. Well moored, we got to know the crew of two other norwegian boats, Helge and Glenn in 'Riga Balsam', and Kjell, Ragnhild and Una in 'Aurora'. We went out to eat dinner the same evening, and had great fun. The crossing of Biscay took us almost 4 days, that means an average of 115 nm each day. Despite a brand new fishing rod, no fish liked our hook. A little disappointment, but we have not given up catching dinner while sailing.



The first day in La Coruña, we went to the beach and did nothing. The next two days we cleaned the whole boat, did service on the engine, repaired the stove and tried to find the cause of an annoying leakage in the engine room. We also finally found a second anchor and some other equipment we have been looking for. So now we will soon leave the sivilization for lonely bays and beaches along the north coast of Spain. The rumour says it is something like a cruisers paradise! Until we return, asta lavista!

The promised story...

This is a short story about how it goes when you don`t have the conscuisness to empty the toilet before it is too late.

When sailing on the canals through backyards and small cozy towns in Holland it isn`t easy to find a good place to empty a toilet. But our tank is big and to avoid worrying about possible problems to come we decided to temporally forget about our litle toilet-problem. We did empty it just before we entered the canals anyway. But as we got visitors in Amsterdam and the number of users increased from 3 to 5, the moment when the tank eventually would be full closed in rapidly. Happily unaware of our litle problem to come we left Amsterdam and set sails south through the canals. But when we stopped in the first lock on our way out of Amsterdam, Arild took a short visit down to the toilet...

While Arild was finishing his business down-stairs David was sitting on deck with the girls while the problem revealed it self. The problem is that we on our tank have a hole above water to vent the tank and let out excess air, but when the tank is full it isn`t air that comes out of the hole. When Arild pumped, David could, behind the back of the girls, see a projectile of brown, smelly water with small pieces of paper being shot from our boat. To his relief, the projectile missed the dinghy to the boat lying next to us with only a few cm and it didn`t look like anybody had noticed. As Jon came back from paying for the locks, David was putting up his best act pretending to search for the stupid boat who let out that awfull smell, sending dirty looks at every direction.(While explaining to Jon in Norwegian what had happened.)

As the sun was on it`s way down it became apparent that we would have to stop between two bridges, and there were no Marina within reach. We went back and forth between the two closed bridges searching for a place too moore. (And secretely trying to emtpy the toilet.) Litle did the kids who sang the bonanza-song for us each time we passed know about the real reason we had for passing so many times. Let`s just hope they didn`t get any fishes that they took home for dinner that evening.

reached Falmouth, leaving for Spain

We reached Falmouth today on the southeastern corner off UK and are since the weather was nice we decided to keep on sailing to Spain. As we are in a bit of a hurry today there won't be much info in this post, but we have some good stories about a toilet and a pigeon to come. And off course some new pictures.

Too be continued...

quote man in map-shop: "You should go now! Go now!"

Dover

We arrived Dover in Great Britain yesterday after crossing the feared english channel. We had a lot of variable winds and had to motorsail a great part of the way. In the darkest night we got 2 kt current againt us, and made hardly no progress. The traffic zone was crossed in daylight and made no problems.

Now the wind is west-southwest up to force 6 and we have to wait for better weather. Force six right in the nose is not very pleasant and cause sleepless nights. We will probably leave for Southampton tonight to buy some boat equipment. We hope to reach Falmouth in a couple of days, where we will wait for a good weather forecast for Biscaya.

Leaving Holland

Our visit in Holland is rapidly approaching an end. We are now in Willlemstad and are heading for Dover in England as soon as possible. We had a short tour around Amsterdam and experienced the gay-parade as mentioned in the last post. We survived.

The girls followed us down to Gouda and will be missed.

Some pictures are beeing added to the page as I write and should be worth a visit. Pictures from Amsterdam and later will be added soon.

PS. As our satellite-phone is lost in mail, there is no need to try reaching us through that phone.

Amsterdam has been reached!

We have decided to write most of our posts in english from now on. (Most of you understand english anyway.)

After delaying the departure from Helgoland for a night because of scary waves, we left the litle island tuesday morning. Wednesday we reached the netherlands and entereded the canals. We realized straight away that this could be demanding on our nerves if we didn't stop looking at the depth meter. As norwegians we are used to being on full alert when there is less than 10 meters under our kiel. We have had an avarage of 0.5 meters under our kiel since we entered...

Going through the canals has been a nice break from all the gails we have had so far and the waves and tide. Going by boat in the canals is more like driving a car. You drive on untill you reach a red light and then you wait for the bridge to open. If it's late you just have to wait for the next morning. Sometimes it feels like we are trespassing through the backyards of people. We have experienced waving 'hello' to people having dinner while we are sailing past in heavy rain. For a norwegian this is on the boarder of being absurd.

The people here are almost overwhelmingly kind. When we had some problems with our sails in Lelyhaven, we got so many offers from people who wanted to help that we had to turn some of the offers down. A big thanks to the couple who drove us to the sailmaker in Lelyhaven and all the people involved in getting the sail to Amsterdam.

Here in Amsterdam we just realized that there is a gay-parade. Luckily David knew some girls that can protect us. (Young sailors from norway staying here only for the weekend might send some signals we didn't mean to send...)

Me har no kome til Amsterdam etter aa ha vore paa Helgoland og venta paa at ein kuling rett i fleisen skulle gi seg. Aa seile paa kanalane her i Nederland er litt slitsomt paa nervene. For ein nordmann er det ikkje berre behagelig aa jevnt over kun ha ein halv meter med vatn under kjoelen. Etter at me gjekk paa grunn foerste gongen slappa me derimot litt av. Det er mjuk botn saa eit lite dytt i revers er alt som skal til for aa bli fri.

Folka her er overmaate vennlige og alle snakker behagelig godt engelsk. Ellers kan det nevnast at det Amsterdam er ganske prega av at det er homo-parade her i helga. Heldigvis kjente David nokre soete jenter her som kan passe paa tri unge seilarar fraa Noreg. Me planlegg aa dra vidare soerover soendag.

Dutch version: Skjipper macht ek oewervaren, ja of ne?

Helgoland

Naa er vi paa Helgoland, selv om det ikke var planlagt. Etter Kielkanalen laa vi et dögn i Cuxhaven for aa handle kart, deretter hadde vi tenkt oss til Norderney paa de frisiske öyer. Men vinden, sjöen og strömmen ville det anderledes, og vi satte heller kursen mot Helgoland. Vi kom hit lördag, og söndag ble vi liggende värfaste i havna, vi maalte vindbyger opp i 45 knop inne i selve havna, og baaten krenget godt. Heldigvis laa vi godt fortöyd. Ute paa havet var det nok enda verre, godt aa väre i en trygg havn da. Naa har vinden löyet og sjöen er roligere, saa vi drar mot Nederland i kveld.

Helgoland er en flott öy, og vi har ogsaa blitt kjent med noen av öyas innbyggere. I gaar ble vi til og med invitert paa bursdagsfeiring. Vi har ogsaa truffet en norsk seiler, Jan paa baaten Tiramisu. Han har sjeneröst overöst oss med kart og god informasjon. Rederiet Bonanza takker.

Bernt Kristian, du er med oss i godt og vondt, diktet skal vi skrive ut og henge paa veggen. Halvor, krengometeret faar prydplassen i salongen. T-skjorta oppdateres jevnlig. Vi önsker oss en tatovering som den paa venstre arm!

English version:
We are now on Helgoland and have been here since Saturday. Yesterday the wind was gusting 45 knots and happily we were safe in the harbour. Today it is better, so we will aim for Netherlands this evening. Thank you Johanna, Julia and Sabrina for nice company and hospitality! See you next summer when we return.

Deutche übersetzung:
Disco Krebs über alles!