The Crossing

While in Lagos Chase and Eric where using the tender for exploration. Without a proper dingy anchor chance found the next best thing: Barra's Fortress. Which he now has a growing love for.



Ken McKinley our weather router from Locust Weather has done an excellent job routing us across the ocean twice and through numerous coastal passages. On day four or five his email described squally weather for the next few days. This is one of the twenty or thirty squals that we encountered ranging from a dark cloud that didnt change wind or weather to 41kts and stinging rain.
Eric and Jermemy enjoy one of the tropcal showers on the back bench.

After six days of nice wind and the spinnaker we sailed into a trough. With the breeze slowly dying and the sea state a little lumpy made waiting for wind a little painfull.

Even though the crew of Barra over the last few months has spent all their extra cash on food and plane tickets we are very rich in sunsets!

Bobby Martin enjoyed some of the trip. I think?

Another wonderful sunset with the 2A up.


Nice broom.


The southern crossing is completely different from the northern crossing. We not only enjoyed three Mahi-Mahi and five tuna but also standard clothing and night watch gear consisted of shorts and maybe a T shirt.

Madeira and Porto Santo

Lagos

Barra Goes Abroad

Chase and I just got back from a weekend trip to Seville and Gibraltar. Seville had tons of exquisite tile work, and at one government building they had a series of tiled alcoves with benches in them representing most of the cities in Spain.

The Cathedral in Seville was massive, but we didn't get a chance to go inside, since the ticket lady wouldn't buy Chase's story that he had forgotten his student ID, so we just got to admire the exterior.

The next morning we caught a bus to La Linea, the Spanish town that's just over the border from Gibraltar. The Spanish countryside along the way was covered with windmills and orange trees, most of which weren't yet ripe. We had a lengthy debate at a bus station about what type of citrus fruit was growing on the trees, finally deciding that they were unripe oranges.

As we came around the last bend in the road and started descending toward Algeciras and Gibraltar, the rock came into view - it's pretty spectacular. The land all around it is super flat, ande then Gibraltar just rears up out of the sea.

We stayed at a hostel just across the street from Casemate's square, the landward terminus of main street. It wasn't nearly as ritzy as the hostel in Seville, but at least we got 2 pieces of toast with butter and tea for breakfast. We spent our first day in Gibraltar hiking the Rock. It's very steep, so even though it's not all that high, it takes a while to get up and down.

From the top of the Rock we could see Africa across the straits of Gibraltar, but it was a hazy day so we could just barely make out the shape of the mountains.

The Barbary Macacques on the rock are very used to human presence, and didn't seem to even take notice of us. They treated passing cars more as playground equipment than a threat.

Gibraltar itself was a strange mix of Spanish and English cultures - the police, phone booths, and signage was straight out of England, but almost everyone spoke both English and Spanish, and we heard people mixing the two a lot.

Gibraltar seemed to have almost an island atmosphere, despite the fact that the border was pretty low key. It definitely lived up to our expectations.

Lagos

We're now in Lagos, Portugal. We hauled out last Wednesday and got the bottom painted, now we're back in the water at the Lagos Marina while Stu goes home for a few days. Lagos seems to be almost entirely populated by the British. The marina is full of liveaboards who are either wintering here or just live here, and the town's many bars are full of holidaymakers, even this late in the season.

We had a long, mostly uneventful motor (a brief episode with water pump belts notwithstanding) to Lagos from Porto, in wind speeds ranging from 0 to 0. We did pass the Russian sail training vessel Mir, powering the other direction in the lack of wind with her staysails set.

Leixoes, the marina for Porto, was weirdly hazy. The region is known for fog, but it was unlike any fog we'd seen before - low, hot, and clinging to the ground. Walking along the beach boardwalk from the harbor to the grocery store, we soon lost sight of the jetty walls in the haze.

To follow our journey, take a look at our GPS tracker at this website: http://charthorizon.com/m/cz/map?vessels=Barra&history=Bermuda_-_Ireland&v_scope=all

Fall

It feels like Autumn in Baiona today. There's a hint of wood smoke in the air, A certain stillness. It's warm, but behind the warmth lurks the hazy threat of winter. The sun is low in the sky, even at noon, casting long, harsh shadows from the ramparts of the castle. It's beautiful weather, but it won't last long. It seems as if we're just keeping even with the advancing seasons as we head south for the winter.

Baiona

We've arrived in Baiona, at the southern end of the Rias of Northwest spain. The town is old, with lots of winding alleys, as well as a castle on the headland protecting the bay.

We spent the last few days exploring the various spanish rias, which were all beatiful, although more built up than we expected. Just offshore of the mouth of the Ria de Vigo, where Baiona is located, are two islands which form a beautiful backdrop to the city.

1,2 Spanish Sailing

3,4 Ria de Cedeira

5,6 La Coruna

7 Camaret

8,9 Ile d'Ouessant

10,11 The French Getting it Done

Departure from Brittany; Hello Spain

Katie Auth and her friend Rachel, also a teacher in Brest this year, did not disapoint us. They were excellent tour guides even though they had only been in the city for a few days. After going out for some beers on Thursday night we headed down towards the town hall where we heard that many students gather on "the steps of liberty". This was an amazing sight to be seen - at least 1000 sudents were gathered enjoying the evening on the steps in front of the town hall. This group, mostly just relaxing with a few beverages, also took to racing recycling barrels with wheels and handles on the ground down the long sloped granite town square. The students were very friendly and long conversations kept us busy late into the night.

We made big plans with Katie and Rachel to cruise to Ile d'Ouessant that weekend. Because they had to work late Friday, we caught the morning tide from Brest to Camaret, just outside the narrow tidal channel that leads to Brest Harbor, where the girls were going to meet us by bus. Unfortunately French transportation doesn't always run on its published schedule, and when Katie and Rachel's bus left 15 minutes early, we had to come back to Brest the next morning to pick them up.

We made it to Ile d'Ouessant in the early afternoon, which left us plenty of time to go onshore and explore the westernmost island in France. The town of Lampaul looks out over the beautiful bay where we were anchored, and we watched the sun set before returning aboard. The next morning we had a beautiful sail in 15-20 knots of breeze back to Camaret, from whence, barring a brief misunderstanding with the French bus system, Katie and Rachel took their leave.


In addition to trash can racing, other notable French pastimes include pastries and sailing. Here are the top five reasons why French sailors get it done!
#5: Wonderfully ridiculous launching ramps. Three 200ft wide lauchning ramps were included in the 2000 slip marina at Oceanopolis Brest.
#4: Wednesday afternoon at 2pm the harbor was alive with every floating contraption imagineable, including Open 40s, canting keel minis, 29ers, Europe dinghys, lasers, windsurfers, and all kinds of unnamed vessels.
#3: They're not scared of light weight! Many of the boats in the marina were minis or open class boats that were used as racer cruisers.
#2: The Brittany coast is unforgiving - with twenty foot tides and strong westerly breeze, the rock infested harbors take the utmost care just to navigate.
#1: They dont work, they just sail!


After Katie and Rachel left, we spent a beautiful three days in Camaret, a small fishing and tourist town just to the west of Brest. Departing for La Coruna on Wednesday September 24th we happend to pass by three French frigates. While wondering what was going on the VHF radio started shouting to us in French. The English version of the message came quickly after, calming us now that we understood they were just conducting underwater demolition nearby. With a quick change of course we skirted the demolition area and headed off to La Coruna.

The weather for our passage was wonderful until we neared the North coast of Spain too early in the morning. Trying to slow down we continued at 7.3kts with half of our jib out. This night was made particularly interesting by the large spanish fishing fleet that was working off the coast. As the sun rose and the fishing vessels came into view rather than being simply blips on the radar and lights bobbing in the seas the wind died down and we were able to enjoy our arival in La Coruna.

After a few days unwinding from our journey and climbing the Tower of Hercules we headed East for an adventure to Cedeira. This is a small town in one of the most beautiful natrually protected Rias I have ever been. Upon our arival we decided we would postpone our return to La Coruna a day and spend some time exploring the area. The beach and the river were amazing. As we rode the tide up though the estuary in the raft we enjoyed the sun and calm high pressure. The town too was a relaxing place a little off the pace of the bigger city La Coruna.

With two nights and a day or relaxasion behind us we head back to La Coruna where my dad was flying in to meet us and join the boat for a week. With his arival we cleaned and prepared the boat along with trying to find some local knowlege about the crusing grounds to the south. A nice couple from the area invited me aboard their boat to show me where we should go. The older man spoke english and his wife was more than happy to have him translate for me. Her recommendations have proved helpful and their translation of rocks and reefs is a classic mix up. As he was explaining the entrance to harbor after harbor she would interject and make sure that I understood how many unmarked stones there were. "Be careful of the stones, Be careful of the stones" he insisted. The coast from along the north western section of Spain is called "the coast of death" for a reason - there are lots maybe tons of stones!

Good bye for now. We are off to the South!

The Royal Cork Yacht club is the oldest yacht club in the world. Barra spent a total of three weeks at the club while I was home and Eric traveled around Ireland. When I arrived back on Barra I found Eric deeply entrenched in the local IRC fleet racing on a great X 334 named Ellia. Owned and skippered by one of the nicest people we have met in all our travels Ria Lyden. Eric trimmed spinnaker for her for two weekend events and two Thursday nights, the first of which Ellia took top honors and won a Heineken mini keg. Through Ria Rob and I were able to secure a ride on anther IRC yacht. We too were able to finish in the top three of our class and bring home a nice trophy. All this great hospitality and good harbor racing made the waiting for a weather window bearable. Thanks as well to Andrew Murray for playing his heart out in the semifinals of the U.S. Open against first seed Raphael Nadal to move on to the finals against Roger Federer. We all enjoyed a chance to relax in front of some great tennis!

After a deep low passed we hopped out of Cork and had a great fifteen hour sprint towards the Scilly Islands. As we approached the shipping channels of the English Channel, the large high pressure moving north from the Azores left us becalmed so we finished our trip with some smooth motoring. Arriving in Brest late on Saturday, Rob left early Sunday for New York Fashion Week and will be back on Wednesday when we will start our cruising in France.

Katie Auth greeted us on the dock in Brest for she is working here at the university teaching English. Hopefully she will be able to join us for the weekend as we head south along the coast setting ourselves up for a crossing to Spain. We have already met a few boats headed in that direction. Two class 40s are headed down to Spain with charter guests and then on to Madeira and the Canaries. They too will be participating in the ARC and hopefully we will see Jan and Felix in our travels later this year.

Thank You, Scotland