The forecast called for almost no wind and there was just a very little bit of a breeze when I weighed anchor. I had decided to sail off and we were ghosting through the anchorage with only a half knot of speed but still able to steer and I got a bit of satisfaction out of this so we kept sailing out of the Ría. After two hours we had covered two miles and I decided to motor.
Although one is supposed to stay within the 20m depth contour because of the orcas I decided if my motor failed so close to the rocks I would be running a greater risk of losing the boat than being met by an orca farther outside who would be keen on having my rudder for lunch.
After a while the sails came back up but unfortunately only for a short time. This went on and off for a while and after six hours we arrived in the Ría de Betanzos in front of the town of Sada near A Coruña. I dropped the anchor at 2.5m at an hour after low tide and was still very far from the shore but had the whole bay to myself. It was very quiet and I slept like a baby.
The next morning I dove to check on my propellor. For some reason Amy has been a bit slower under motor than usual. Everything was clean and looked fine. The problem must lie elsewhere.
I then finally installed and tested my emergency rudder which is a 3m oar that I can use for sculling and as I now found out also seems to work fine should my rudder fail or be bitten off by an orca.
After that I went into the harbour and tied Amy to a pontoon in the Club Nautico de Sada which turned out to be a very nice and welcoming place. The next day I followed an invitation to a fiesta at the clubhouse and had a great time. I also met Sabine, a very experienced single handed sailor who has been across the Atlantic multiple times and got a load of tips for my journey.
I helped Rafa the harbourmaster with docking some boats and he invited me to a few beers and I got to practise speaking Spanish and had a great time.
My weather window for going directly to Madeira from here doesn’t seem to want to arrive and I am planning of making shorter trips because there is a storm coming that I want to avoid by all means. But since there is an infamous orca hotspot just south of here I need to go very far outside of the coast which will cost me one or two extra days for every trip. Not ideal but apparently unavoidable if I don’t want to hug the 20m contour.
I have to say that this whole orca situation and the increasingly unpredictable and unfavourable weather is giving me more stress than I would like and I will be a lot more relaxed when I hopefully get to Madeira or the Canary Islands.
