Sundowner II log – 2004 update 5- Elantxobe to Santander

Wednesday 25th August
A nice sunny start to the day, bought a paper along with the bread from the guy in the van who visits every morning coming down the hill beeping his horn. The weather hasn’t arrived yet but a couple of large fishing vessels have along with the increasing swell. The girl in the bar told us how an old fisherman had explained to her how the sea birds come into harbour ahead of heavy weather and it’s quite true there are quite a few here now whereas there were none before. Going to try a trip up the hill to catch a bus in our hunt for gas.

Sunday 29th August A cup of tea at 10 o’clock on a beautiful Sunday morning in Santander after a relaxed evening and a sound sleep aided by the copious amounts of local happy juice. We have to return to the bar at the end of the marina to collect a book that the owner is going to give us. It tells the story of his brother who completed, in second place, the first ever Mini Transat from Plymouth to Antigua, the route chart is on display in the bar. We are now provisioned with diesel and water ready for the next trip along to Ribadasella. Being 60 miles it will be another overnight trip but the forecast is good. To time our arrival for 3 o’clock, just before high tide, we have to leave before 1o’clock in the morning, So it will be leaving the marina at 8 o’clock tonight to negotiate the channel before dark then anchor for an hour or two off the beach in front of the main town. Ribadasella has some pre-historic caves that we would like to visit so we will be ready with our paints and brushes.

Once again it was a bit sad to leave such an idyllic place as Elantxobe it was so strange to be just hanging off the wall in the beautiful busy harbour while people just went about their business stopping now and again to look at the strange little English ship parked in their back yard. We did catch the bus into Gernika and after lots of walking located some gas, well a very small camping gas bottle as the one shop that did sell it just had lots of empty bottles and was closing along with all the other shops. So with a couple of hours to spare before the bus it was tapas and beer time. When I asked the bar owner for ‘dos beer’ a puzzled look came over his face so I walked along the bar and pointed at the pump and he said ‘oh, you want 2 beers, why didn’t you say’ duh! On catching a different bus back it took us another route past the nature reserve of Mundaka, around the corner of the headland west of our harbour, and we instantly saw the huge surfing waves entering the river basin with the large sand bars. It is used to hold surfing competitions and with our harbour being so protected we hadn’t realised how rough it was. Our final day was spent doing the local thing of strolling around the harbour all day with the occasional ice cream, coffee or beer. Dennis had a good chat with the Capitan (who speaks no English) then we think it was his wife, daughter and son turned up and through his English speaking teenage daughter Dennis managed to say where we had come from and where we are going, as the normal mistake when they see the Guernsey flag with the cross is to assume we are from Malta. Translation got a bit muddled and we weren’t going to Hawaii we were from Hawaii and the whole town knew it! We’re pretty sure it was rectified later and it had in fact taken us 6 months to get from England not Kailua.

With a wave from the Capitan and his friend we exited through and around the walls, hoisted the sails and out around the headland. Once again the wind was ahead so with an apology to Perkins we motor sailed to Santander with a gas rig, fishing boats and capes making a direct course the best option. The little wind there was did push our speed up and we averaged a credible 5.2 knots the journey taking 12 hours with the at times rather large and impressive swell not slowing us much at all. We were met with another whistle as we approached the visitor’s pontoon and we were escorted to the end of the marina to a welcome berth that turned out to cost a reasonable 20 euros. It hadn’t really registered that the time we would have to leave was 1 o’clock the following morning so later we paid for another night and would have one of those lazy Sundays you remember from way back only now we don’t have any new potatoes and spinach to dig or lawns to cut in our garden. Mind you a few friends visiting for a barbeque would be nice. At some time last night our friendly marina Capitan had dropped off the weather forecast – probably not a bad thing we missed him as he seemed well up for a laugh and we would have ended up with one of those Ginger Tosser induced hangovers. Talking of the bronzed bandsman, haven’t heard from him for ages, we know he’s been busy collecting his new boat from Southampton but it’s like he’s just vanquished.