A bit of a hairy ride!

Santander is a lovely city, different from the moment we sailed into to the grand entrance to the river despite the greyness of the day. 

We anchored close to a little beach and headed into town for supplies and an explore.

 One of the grand buildings is the head office of the Santander bank, purely phycological of course but it certainly gave the impression of a good solid place to have your money with!

After exploring the city on Saturday we headed off to the other side of the bay behind a long sandy peninsular to get away from the crowds. Well, that was the idea. 

On Sunday we left the boat for a delightful bike ride through the rolling countryside behind Santander. When we got back to the boat that we had left all on its own in the morning, half of Santander seemed to have joined us -

I like Spain. There is a lovely atmosphere here; Mediterranean, relaxed and slightly rustic - and nice and warm of course!


A little bit of the charm is the bells that seems to ring at all times of the day.






Like most of the building, the churches lack the elegance of the French churches but have a rustic charm of their own.

Whilst anchoring Woody disappeared for a while. At 45' long it isn't that big a place to loose a dog, but then that  depends on the quality of his hiding place; we found him in the anchor locker unable to get out!

Having a Woody and a Waddy aboard has been the source of some confusion!




We left Santander on Monday afternoon with a spanking following wind and had a rather longer sail than planned. There was a 3-4 meter swell out at sea, exciting when it got under the stern and the boat surged ahead riding the wave but we soon discovered a problem with it. We were headed for a river for the night. Like most rivers it had a sand bar at the entrance and the pilot book warned not to try and enter at low tide if a swell was running because the swell could break on the shallow bar. It was just about high tide when we arrive so I figured we would get in despite the swell; I was wrong. I could see the waves breaking on the shore as we approached but there is usually a gap in the breakers at the river entrance; not here. As we got within a few hundred yards the swell was getting bigger as it developed into rolling waves as the water depth reduced. As we rode the crest of one of the waves towards the entrance I rapidly decided that surfing into a river with an entrance no wider than 50 metres was a bad plan! I threw the helm over, gunned the engine and high tailed it back out to sea.

It was now getting late. It was 6 o'clock, the next harbour was 16 miles away and sunset was at 9.30. Whats more the pilot book warned of another sandbar and the tide would be running out when we arrived which would increase the size of any waves on the bar; I was beginning to think we might end up with a night at sea!

We had a strong wind behind us and made a good 7 knots which put us at the harbour mouth at 9pm. Happily the entrance was set at 45 degrees to the swell thus much of its force was killed by the entrance walls. I approached with considerable caution with my eyes glued to the depth gauge, I could still see waves breaking in the entrance but they did not look big. As long as the depth remained greater than about 4m I would continue in. The standing waves caused by the tide running out at about 2 knots made for a bit of a hairy ride but the depth held and with considerable relief we entered the most beautiful harbour I have seen yet. I took this photo as the sun set.

We had found a real gem in San Vincente de La Barquera (even the names are great!)