A (relatively) quiet night at anchor before the gales

We took the decision to leave Combarros yesterday, after a final shopping trip ashore. We finally took the brave pill and bought some fresh fish (which, to our relief, was experly gutted and filleted for us) and some wonderful bread and pastries. The rain and stong winds are still forecast to arrive on Saturday evening so we thought we'd head towards Baiona but anchor in the lee of Las Islas Cies, at the entrance to the Ria de Vigo.

 

There was no wind for the 18 mile passage but we enjoyed an Empanada (a Galician flat pastry pie with savoury filling - tuna in our case) and cheesecake at lunchtime as we motored along the rocky coast. We anchored 100m off the shore of the island, which is a beautiful nature reserve with white sandy beaches, rocky points and thick forrest, and settled down to a bit of reading and boat maintenance before setting about the cooking of the large dorada (a fairly blunt-nosed but meaty fish) that we'd bought. After debate we decided on oven cooking in a foil parcel containing onions, butter, white wine, cherry tomotoes and tarragon; the result was pretty good but should have added some lemon!

 

Supper over, we turned our attentions to increasing our comfort at anchor. As a heavy displacement, relatively narrow yacht, Maunie is a brilliant sea boat in windy conditions but, at anchor, she has bit of a tendancy to roll. It's not just a steady rolling motion, though; she starts gently and then builds momentum over four or five rolls then does a biiiig roll before stopping momentarily and then restarting the whole sequence. It can be a little wearing.

Our anchorage was windless but we had a little surging swell so we tried, for the first time, deploying the 'Sea Brake'.

 

As its name suggests, the Sea Brake is a sea drogue, designed in Australia to provide control and safety in extreme sea conditions; it would be let out on a 100m rope behind the boat to slow her down and let big breaking waves slide past us rather than having us careering down their faces like a large and mildly out-of-control surfboard. We therefore hope it'll never have to be used for this purpose but we were told that it does have a secondary use as a roll-reducer at anchor.

 

With a small anchor and some chain hanging below it to make it sink, we deployed it over the side and hung it from the end of the main boom which we swung out as far as it would go. The results were brilliant! As the boat rolled towards it, the Sea Brake would sink further below the surface then as she tried to roll back, the small vents in its 'funnel' would restrict the flow of water out of it so it restrained the upwards motion of the boom. It didn't stop all movement of course but we had a much steadier night so we'll use it a lot in the future.

 

This morning we had an amazing "red sky in the morning, shepherds' warning" sunrise so we left our anchorage late morning to head across the bay to Baiona. As forecast the wind swung sound to the southwest rapidly increased so, as we beat towards the harbour, we had gust of up to 40 knots across the deck. Drama over and where we've settled in to the plush potoons of Monte Real Cub de Yates, a very smart yacht club.

Baiona sounds lovely - much less urban than it's much bigger neighbour Vigo, with a well-preserved castle and old town - so we had a walk around the castle this afternoon and look forward to exploring it more tomorrow. Hopefully we'll find an electrician here to investigate our non-charging problem on Monday but, if not, we'll move up to the boatyards in Vigo.