Vilagarcia: 19 September

We arrived here yesterday after a lovely few days in the lower part of the Ria de Arousa. We left the forest fires behind, luckily, and have been pretty lucky with the weather, as it is still nice and warm.

The Ria de Arousa is much busier with vessels, as Vilagarcia is quite a big town and port. There are also literally hundreds of mussel “vivieros” (mussel rafts) dotted around, which makes for interesting navigation.

 

Some of the mussel rafts in the Ria de Arousa

At least all the vivieros are well spaced and are only anchored in the middle so you can get between them, unlike some of the fish farms in Scotland. This must be one of the major mussel growing region of Spain, if not Europe, and the mussels are huge, delicious and very cheap. There is a big industry associated with them with lots of little boats harvesting and factories ashore as well.

 

Boat at the mussel raft

 

 

Close up of mussel raft. Note large chunk of Granite used as ballast. Good sea gull perching place!

We stayed at a lovely anchorage for a few nights at Puerto de Cruz. There was only us and another Dutch boat. The dutch couple have sold up completely and are on their way to the Cape Verde Islands and then to Brazil.

Anchorage at Puerto de Cruz

 

Harbour at Puerto de Cruz

 

Traditional Galician sailing boat

We are now waiting for Andy’s sister Sally, who is  arriving today to sail with us for 2 weeks and then we will only have 2 weeks left. We have booked flights back on 19th October and are now looking for a likely and safe  place to leave the boat for the winter.

The weather is still lovely so we are making the most of the sunshine for the next few weeks. Sorry ……