April 29 – Mai 13, 2019; 484 nm and 50 days after departure from La Rochelle

Two weeks at anchor in a beautiful bay almost on our own. It sets your soul free and gives you a lot of privacy! Just great!

However, before we reached Viveiro we had a rough ride. The wind was heavy but still manageable. The ugly part started when waves were building up from the east. The swell came as expected from the north/west. This created a very uncomfortable sloping rocking from one side to the other which developed a slightly unpleasant feeling in my guts…
The worst happened in Norbert’s night shift when a wave broke into our cockpit. A huge noise and the boat shook as it was hit by something. What the hell was that? I was awake immediately and ready for… what for?  El Capitano checked the cockpit and then we realized that a wave entered our cockpit. Everything was wet, but fortunately that was about it. Only there was this unusual burning smell and smoke in the air, we couldn’t explain. After a couple of minutes we figured that it was our heating, which created the odour. We guessed the wave hit the exhaust of the heating and the water was able to enter the inner part of the heating killing the flames. We switched it off and were hoping that it was not broken. It wasn’t! So in the end all was good but it took some time getting our adreline level back to normal!

All the little towns in Galicia have their visiting worth sights. They are all very old and one can always find beautiful old buildings and churches sometimes even from the 13th century. We went ashore, had some beautiful walks up the hill and alongside the river. As always we needed to find a ” Ferreteria”, a little diy shop, where you can buy things like screws, mosquito mesh, pots, threaded bars, espresso cooker and and and. It’s amazing how small the shops are and how much they offer. Finding those shops automatically gives us a nice insight of the villages and contact to the locals. 🙂

Sometimes you just meet people in the supermarket. 🙂 We were introduced by Laurence (we gave him a lift ashore to the supermarket as he was joining us at anchor for one night) to the british couple Terry and Alan, while shopping groceries. After a little chat they invited the three of us for dinner in their beautiful old ketch from 1963. In return we had them over for teatime (with banana bread I espeacially baked 😉 ) at Altimate when they were also at anchor for their last day (to avoid waiting for hightide in the morning in the marina).

Customs visited us twice this time. I forgot to mention that. In the last weeks we got checked by customs regulary. Sometimes they just ask if we have the blue customs paper and sometimes, like here in the bay of Viveiro, they come aboard check the passports. The second time here we even got another new blue custom paper, yeah! We don’t really know why they controll the boats but they are always very friendly and polite and- when they speak reasonable english -also funny. 🙂

We had a couple of days with strong winds up to 35 knots. Those days help us to get even more confident in our 25 kilogramm Rocna anchor. It didn’t move a slightest inch. That is definitely a nice proof which gives us a good and safe feeling for future strong wind anchoring.

When I was a little girl (yes there was a time a I was young), I loved horses and horseriding. So when I saw the advertisment of a horse market (which only is held once a year and already for the 300’s time) in a village called “Geldo” which wasn’t too far from Viveiro, I persuaded mi capitano to stay and join me to see the market. Florian, a young german guy, who is traveling with “Saviour” the boat from our english couple Paulyne and Rob also wanted to join us to admire the horses. (The La Rochelle crew also turned up in Viveiro, but they stayed at the marina.)

Frankly speaking the walk there was almost more interestiung than the market itself. It took us about 1,5 hours to walk along the river through a very scenic landscape to finally reach the hamlet with the horse event. Ha ha ha – I was expecting a huge horse trade with hundreds of horses. 🙂 Maybe there were hundred horses if at all.

Though it was interesting and the horses were absolutely amazing!  The best part was the trot horse riding contest. Those animals are fast – wow!

After a couple of hours we needed to go home; the boys had enough anyhow. 🙂 too much horses. On the way back we found a little bakery where they baked their bread with their own harvested grains. It was absolutely delicious. Maybe just because we were starving as they didn’t offer anything but sweet stuff at the fair…
Tired in the late afternoon we returned to Altimate and got ready for the next move to A Coruña early next morning.