Safely into La Coruna - and dolphin photos

After a really excellent two and a half day passage, we arrived safely into La Coruna at 15.30 after 330 miles, tired but elated. Amazingly, after all that distance we were less than a mile from Stormvogel for most of the voyage so had the comfort of seeing each others' masthead navigation lights in an otherwise empty sea.

Last night saw the wind increase to Force 6, again a broad reach, so we carried full sail and fairly romped along, pretty much at hull speed (around 8 knots). In these higher winds, Stormvogel's extra length meant she began to leave us but Peter and Heidi were finding that their autopilot was struggling to keep control of their huge rig so they reefed down their foresail and stayed with us. We are really please with how Maunie performed, though; to stay with a boat 10 ft longer is no mean feat. Peter commented "I'm glad that your boat is in a different division to ours in the ARC!"

This morning we suddenly had some big ships and erratic fishing boats to deal with as we approached the Spanish coast and then the wind began to ease so we had another play with spinnakers. Photos of these to follow, but in the meantime, here are a few of our friendly dolphins from the first night:

Thanks to Simon Raine for his appearance here (read his comment on the last update for details!)

One final wildlife photo for you. When we launched the spinnaker this afternoon, out of nowhere arrived a large bat which flew at it and around it for ten minutes or so:

When we finally dropped the spinnaker, Graham was stuffing it into its sailbag when the bat emerged from it (must have been clinging on grimly!) and flew off towards the shore.

More news and photos to follow tomorrow when we've hopefully had a full night's sleep without boat noises! The marina at La Coruna is very new, smart, half empty and fairly pricey but we'll be here for a couple of nights at least whilst we plan and check the weather. The Rias (long inlets, a bit light Scottish sea lochs) of this part of Galicia are said to be beautiful so ideally we'll spend a few days exploring before we head further south.