Ria De Corme / Laxe

Woke up and paid for my berthing before getting Brian to lend a hand slipping the lines at 0730 utc. By 0800 I had rounded the Coruna breakwater and already had the mainsail up. The first thing of note was that there was very little wind and a good size swell still running after the previous days bad weather.

All in all the wind was just strong enough to sail – if you had a flat ocean. Each time the the swell heeled the boat over the sails just tacked / flopped and then popped back with a bang when the wave had passed. This was one of those ‘man I’m sick of the sound of the engine days’. I motorsailed all the way, attemting every hour or so to sail sans motor without any luck.

My 37.74 (log) miles took me to my destination Laxe beach in Ria De Corme, very nice!
I dropped anchor in 5m of water over sand with no other boats within the anchorage with the wind blowing me gently offshore – perfect. Then out came the drink & sarnies, only to have the wind breeze from no fixed direction.

My first night at anchor was rather sleepless as I had to listen to the sound of the anchor chain being dragged across the sea bottom and I had visions of waking up aground on the beach!

My new found friend is my handheld Garmin GPS, or more specifically its anchor drag alarm. I set the distance threshold for 10m which did cause it go off every now and again due to my drift, but generally it was a nice comfort factor that allowed me to relax easier. I also set an alarm every 3hrs to check my position visually. Old sea dogs (if any read this) are probably laughing at all this and sleep soundly at anchor.