Biscaya!

Sailing across the Bay of Biscay has been a milestone for us. Partly because it has a bad reputation for having rough seas, and partly because it would be our longest single stretch so far. We are making our way down to Las Palmas, and looking for a weather window. It looked good early in the week, winds of 11 knots with gusts up to 15 knots. Magnus purchased an offshore weather service and we tried out their weather routing service, and we went through our other charts with ocean current information etc.

Early in the morning on 8 August we set off from Camaret Sur Mer on the northwest coast of France, a lovely little town near Brest. We approached the Raz de Sein with a group of French boats, and it turned out we also were lucky because we hadn’t fully understood this tricky passage and managed to serendipitously time it perfectly so we had 5 knots of current with us through the passage. The current took us further east than we wanted, but we knew there would be easterly winds the next day, so we travelled with the current to make as much distance as possible. It was a perfect day of sailing, calm and enjoyable, one of the best since we started our trip.

The first night went well, it was overcast so we couldn’t see the moon or any stars, but we had our radar on and our AIS which is a anti-collision system for identifying ships at sea. We kept constant watch with rotating shifts. Magnus was spooked by the sudden loss of depth from 150 meters to just 4 meters, until he realized that dolphins were swimming under the boat. They kept us company for most of the night.

On the morning of the 9th we eagerly awaited the east winds which would push us toward Luarca. Our destination was chosen because it was the easiest to reach at our angle of wind sailing, we only had looked at the sea charts and read in our Reed’s Nautical Almanac about Luarca.

When the wind finally arrived, it was much stronger than the forecasted 11-15 knots, instead blowing steady 22-25 knots. When the wind blows stronger, it also whips up the waves, so the forecasted 1 – 1,5 meter waves became over 2 meters. The waves managed to both roll Lulu from side to side and also crash against the bow, slowing us down. Since we had constant winds of 22-25 knots, we had 3 reefs in our mainsail and only the staysail, not the genua. That meant we crept through rolling seas at 4 knots of speed.

Fortunately, everything we learned about securing the boat in rough seas helped. In terms of storage, only a couple of small items fell out of their storage spaces. We had pouches of prepared pasta that we ate cold, as trying even to heat water was a challenge in the rough seas. Magnus had set the lifelines and we avoided going on deck as much as possible, and we were clipped in to the cockpit at all times.

By the end of the evening on that rough second day, the seas and wind calmed down, and we could motor-sail (using the motor but also having the sails up for extra speed). The skies cleared and we could see the moon and stars. We took turns again at keeping watch, and in the morning we had clear skies and warm sun on our faces.

Eager to complete our Biscaya adventure, we continued to motor-sail throughout the day, only stopping when we had a good sailing wind for the last couple of hours. Another thought in our wanting to reach shore was the possibility of the Orcas migrating to the Bay of Biscay, sightings had been reported although the appear to be around Gibraltar primarily.

We looked for land for a long time, and we were actually quite close when we finally saw the mountainous skyline, it had been hidden behind a haze. Reading about Luarca, we saw a lot of negative comments about the harbor being full of swell, but didn’t have the energy to spend hours sailing toward another harbor so we gave it a chance.

Luarca is a lovely gem of a town. There are only 5 visitor moorings, and we were lucky enough to snag one of them. Completing our mooring process took a while, we had to blow up the dinghy that we had collapsed and stored for the ocean passage, and the winds turned Lulu around the mooring ball in the harbor, it took us 1,5 hours before we were finally secure and could celebrate our first big passage. We took the dinghy (Jakob) to the steep ladder that allows us to climb to land, and walked into town for dinner. The wind died down, there was no swell, it was warm, we had finally arrived in summer. A very happy ending to the Bay of Biscay adventure!