The Infamous Biscay Crossing!

After a great few days in St Martin-de-re, we had to move on to La Rochelle, as Helen and our cruising buddies from Silhouette, Caroline and Charlotte had to get respective flights home for a few days, which gave both Ian and I an opportunity to catch up with a few jobs on each of our boats.

La Rochelle is a great town with Europe’s largest marina holding in excess of 4500 boats, a great social life, and many many bars restaurants, cafes, and shops to keep any tourist happy for days.

       La Rochelle

Once the girls had returned, we made plans to cross Biscay, an infamous sea responsible for many stories  – and of course most of them bad or scary.

We attempted to leave twice but were put off by ongoing thunderstorms and left in company with Silhouette at 4pm on Wednesday.  We had an uneventful if rather rolly and windless crossing managing only a few hours sailing in 39 hours overall, making landfall at Gijon in Spain at 7.30am Friday morning.  We were visited by dolphins once, Helen saw a pilot whale which had her squealing with excitement and the fish count was……1-0 to the tuna which bit the end off our fishy lure but failed to fall for either its charms or any belonging to the numerous different squid lures we dangled off our rods.

      Gijon

Gijon itself is at first glance a deceptively plain town, but what you see from the marina bears no resemblance to what’s on offer further afield. Although a newer town with less medieval charm than some of the towns we have visited, walking a little way up the steps at the east-side of the port delivers a hustling array of Tapas bars and restaurants, which on a Friday night often spills into a Saturday morning.

Its “Mercado Del Sur” in “Plaza Seis de Agosto” is a typical Spanish covered market that has numerous fruit & veg and fish & meat stalls within it, underneath this is a large well-stocked supermercado, which allowed us to provision up for our next leg…….

 

 

4 Comments

  1. Really glad to hear you have tackled Biscay successfully. Enjoy the next stage of your journey and stay safe. Al & Amy p.s. hopefully you have not yet run out of brown sauce!

  2. Loving following your adventures so glad you are following your dreams. Happy birthday Helen, I know you will enjoy this one!
    Collette

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