A Scotsman an Englishman and an Irishman go South: Day 17

We have had to change our plan. We noticed when leaving our last anchorage that our anchor light is not working. On checking it transpires that we have also lost our tri colour light. Both of these lights are at the top of the mast and not easy to see or get to, to fix. We have established that we have power to the mast foot so the problem is aloft.

Neither of these problems are insurmountable but we have decided to get as far as we are going South to the town of Vigo, that has a good chandlery, over this weekend in time for their opening on Monday.

So we left Muros at 11.00 am and had a very good sail for the first two thirds of our trip. We started with 2 reefs in the mainsail and during the day the wind calmed down considerably, allowing us to go to a full sail plan.

We were heading in towards our destination of Sanxenxo , no I don’t know how to pronounce it properly either! When we noticed in the distance a very large and black thunder head. It looked like we were going to skirt around it and for the first 30 minutes or so we did. However just as we were changing watch it changed direction and came straight at us very quickly.

We know that this type of cloud always has a squall in front of it where, the wind accelerates but we underestimated the strength of this one and didn’t reef back down in time. I would like to say we were prepared for it, but it was more we rode it out. A real testament to the sea handling quality of the boat that we got through it, with only some small damage to the mainsail sliders as we reefed, in the squall. This has added to our repair list.

A second squall hit us an hour later but this time we were completely prepared.

We were soon tied up in Sanxenxo with a very welcome beer and more stories of the sea to tell.

Arrived Sanxenxo 18.00 pm, 37 miles run.