We have arrived in La Coruña. We made it safely and in good time.

Positives

• Faster than expected – we’d planned for 3-4 days so just under 2½ (all either reaching or downwind) was fantastic.
• Crew welfare – only one child ill and not for long (only because she insisted on playing on an iPad against her parents’ better advice), so four out of five not seasick at all. The children have never spent so long out in the cockpit.
• Weather forecast was correct and conditions panned out broadly as we expected.
• Dolphin honour guard throughout about half of the journey.
• Sailing – we were reaching for most of Day 1 and Day 2, before running down to A Coruña.

Negatives

• Batteries couldn’t cope with navigation lights, auto-pilot, AIS, VHF and instruments for extended duration – wind mostly abeam or behind us rendering wind generator less effective and as for the solar panels – well they’ve just woken up now we’ve arrived in Spain – so we’ll be installing another battery between here and the Atlantic, as well as completing our Hydrovane installation.
• (One split pin broke off one of the beam guard rail fastenings.) – FIXED
• Mislaid Skipper’s GoPro footage of our dolphin companions (a good thing we used the odd other camera, then.)

Bay of Biscay

Sailing at last. Most of our crossing was reaching, broad reaching or running with BF4-5 (for landlubbers that means ideal conditions). Of the just under two and a half days (56 hours from casting off to being safely moored in Club Real Nautico), we motored for about 10 hours (initially prompted by shortage of power for 2x 1 hour, then by a loss of wind on the morning / lunchtime of the second day – middle of Biscay would be no fun drifting in 2m seas). Otherwise our passage plan played out very much as intended, a southerly reach changing to downwind sailing as the wind veered round from W to N and then NE, with very few hazards to negotiate other than the odd ‘school’ of fishing vessels – it was great to be sailing for the majority of the time after too much time motoring into the wind or without sufficient wind on our way down round Brittany.

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