| Datum: | 21-06-2016 La Coruňa | | | | Thursday 16-06-2016
Today we sail to La Coruña, a big town, visited by lots of sailors. It is 12 miles away and – again – there is not too much wind, so we hoist the main sail and have the engine on as accompaniment. It’s chilly, cloudy and unsure weather, so I put on my sailing gear, just in case. When we near La Coruña, it gets better and I can change my sailing suit for shorts. We follow a few others blogging sailors, most of all the ones that left this year. One of them is the boat “Bojangles”, with Rob and Baudine on board. They left little time after us and sailed to La Coruña by way of England. At AIS we saw that they arrived here some days ago. Harbour master Pedro already comes our way and directs us to an empty spot, next to the Bojangles, where we berth the Pegasus.
Marina and harbour charges
We have chosen the “Real Club Nautico La Coruña” a.k.a. “Marina Real” near the old town centre. We want to stay a couple of days here and as usual we try to get a reduction. Standard is a discount of 1 night: you stay 5 nights, you pay 4, but since we have the Galicia Passport, he promises us even more. We only have to pay when we leave and it is then we find out that we didn’t get this last discount after all. Too bad. The facilities, 2 washing machines, 1 dryer, large showers and a bar/restaurant are within walking distance and look excellent. We turn a few cycles in the washing machines, but both these and the dryer take hours before they are ready. The marina has no possibility to rent a bike. There are bikes on the square in front of the marina, but they are only for the inhabitants of La Coruña. The only spot to rent a bike is all the way at the other side of town and we don’t find that very practical. The staff of the marina is very friendly and speaks – a little – English. The marina is far from crowded, but we see more and more English and French boats in the harbour, apparently the tourist season really is underway.
The city
La Coruña is a big historical port, lying at the Atlantic Ocean, with more than 250.000 inhabitants and lots of sights to be seen, like museums, Roman churches, gardens, parks and small streets with bars and restaurants, of which we visited quite a few!
The marina lies on the “Avenida de la Marina”, a promenade with a small park, restaurants and a bus-and taxi stop. The most important shopping street is the pedestrian Rua Real (Calle Real), a bystreet of the extension of the Avenida de la Marina. These street comes to the “Plaza Maria Pita”, the central square, in other words the heart of the city, where the imposing city hall is established and where stately homes lie with their special built-out additions. On the right side there is the tourist information office, where you can get more information about the city. Go through the second street on the left “Calle de la Franje” in the direction of “Calle de la Galera”, there are all the right places, like bars-restaurants, where we had some excellent tapas. From the “Plaza Maria Pita” to the east you enter the old city, to be honest, it was not very attractive to us, old decayed houses and not very lively streets. The exception is “Plaza General Azcarraga” where, at the moment we had a coffee in a neighbouring café, there was a meeting of the Socialist Party, that is what we surmised, anyway. Spaniards talk very loud and fairly fast at that, so we understood zilch. On the Plaza there are beautiful old trees with entangled roots. Whenever there is a small church, I can’t keep myself from entering it, a tic from the old days, when my father used to drag us into every church, castle or ruin. Now I don’t go in just to cool off but also to absorb the silence.
Alongside the old town lies a castle “Castillo de San Anton”; it nowadays shelters a museum, which we only looked at from the outside. After that you have the big new marina and then you follow the “Paseo Alcalde Franciscus Vazquez” up to the “Torre De Hercules”. We took the bus from the marina along the sea up north, which cost us only €1,30 per person.
This “Torre” is a lighthouse built by the Romans on a 57 m high rock of the peninsula, it is 55 m high and visible up to 24 miles (43 km). It is the only lighthouse in the world that is still in operation from its original construction to its present form. In 2009 the lighthouse was put on the world heritage list of UNESCO.
We took a walk to the Torre and enjoyed the beautiful view over the sea, that is where we will sail to in a couple of days and then we can see the tower from the other side. We didn’t climb the tower itself… it has 234 steps to climb, we have walked enough by now. At the end of the “Paseo Alcalde Franciscus Vazquez” you’ll find the “aquarium Finissterrae”, with an open air swimming pool for 3 seals.
The submarine-aquarium “Nautilus” is very nice, with a collection of posters and paintings on Jules Verne and the Nautilus along the staircase. Not as spectacular as we are used to from aquaria in Holland. But it was cute to see a real “Nemo-clownfish”, like in the Pixar movie. After that, you arrive at a large beach, the “Playa del Orzan”, but we didn’t see it. It was wonderful weather that day, so we preferred a terrace over hot sand on the beach. We quenched ourselves with a nice cold beer and with tapas and fried squid!
The weather
The first day we had a shower or two, but most of the days where especially nice, warm and sunny. Once in a while the day started cloudy, but brightened later on. Could it be? Have we finally reached Sunny Spain??
Food and drink
As real Dutchies, we have to get used to the eating habits in Spain, but we are getting the taste by and by. As we told you, there are a lot of nice eateries in the “Calle de Galera”. Unfortunately, there was one where we had a bad experience, for the first time. The food was bad as well as the service. A surly waiter, not listening, who didn’t serve, but almost threw the dinner on our table. Pity, no Michelin star for this one. But for the most we find the waiters friendly, the tapas tasty and the wine enjoyable. In one of the restaurants, the waiter even gave me a hand kiss, and there is a bar where a lot of hams hang from the ceiling with little trays under them. In the supermarket I take a pictures of the fish department, thus I have the shapes of the fish ànd their names and we can recognise them better.
Boat chores
There is a lot of swell in the marina and we lie close to the opening, which makes the mooring lines chafe (scour and crunch). To prevent this, we provided the lines on both side with rubber springs, so they move along with the movement. We bought a long piece of garden hose and attached it around the line at board side, before securing it on the cleat. Anything to reduce the noise of squeaking and creaking, because that can really keep you awake, that is to say, me, Fred sleeps through every noise…… For Fred’s life jacket we were still looking for the gas cartridge (the continuing story…) and a salt tablet. The cartridge we found, at last, but still no salt tablets. We fear that this might not be so easy to come by. We bought a new detailed sea map from Imray for this area and the oncoming ones. Of a couple of fenders the lines were worn or ready to snap, so we replaced them. We have on board 3 gas bottles with each 5 kg of propane, of which one is empty and the second will be in short time. With only one bottle to go I thought it smart to have the one bottle refilled here in La Coruña. It turns out to be quite an undertaking, since it is prohibited in Spain to fill gas bottles in built-up areas. According to the harbour master, filling them up is only possible at a supplier of REPSOL-gas. The company is called Arbupes and is established in the little village of Mesoires just outside La Coruña on the Estrada de Mesoiro no.8. We took bus 23, you have to get off at the stop after the bus has passed under the viaduct/passway of the AC14 and not, as we did, get off too late so that we had to walk back 1,5 km. I dare anybody to say we don’t get enough exercise!!!
In no time the bottle was refilled with propane-gas and with a little language problems overcome, we find out that the only other place in Galicia where you can fill a tank is Vigo. Handy anyway to have this address! The busstop for the route back was just in front of the gas filling station, luckily. The cost for all this hassle was 4 x the busfair : € 5,20 and € 8,00 for the gas. You have to do something to keep yourself busy, don’t you?
Various things
Of course we have a boat insurance, however, it is quite restricted in terms of area and so we closed it down and arranged a new one at the firm Pantaenius, that provides a worldwide coverage.
Kit stares his eyes out at the fish that swim around the boat and we fear that he might jump overboard in his enthusiasm. Fortunately not,… today.
Rob of the “Bojangles ”has a very good tip! They don’t have electric winches (we don’t either) and because it takes a lot of strength to hoist either a sail or a person up in the mast, they use a heavy duty right angle drill that they put on the winch with a special 8-sided intermediate piece. A super-duper idea and certainly worth finding out where we can find one of these! In the city you see a lot of beggars, they have a sign board around their neck and hold up a cup for money. Some of them make music or sell apples.
Encounters
A Dutch boat, the “Freya” came sailing into the harbour and the next day we got acquainted with the crew: Suzanne, Mark and their 2-year-old son Coen. It was like this :we were suddenly startled by a heavy crackling and a scream; Suzanne got off the boat onto the narrow jetty and went right through the planks with her foot. Luckily, she was quite safe, apart from a few scratches, but even so, she was quite shocked. I went over to see if I could do anything to help. We exchanged our info, they are going on a tour around the Atlantic and will do this in about one year. We will certainly meet again!
Shortcoming from the harbour personnel: no excuses for the accident, although they immediately started replacing these planks…and all the other planks on all the jetties!
The crew of the “Luna Verde”, which we met in Scheveningen, were also in the marina, but we haven’t spoken to them; they went on a little later on.
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| | | 28-06-2016, reactie van Carel en Ria | Bedankt voor jullie mooie kaart uit Cedeira!!
Hoe doen jullie het met douchen, wassen en drogen als jullie de oceaan over gan steken??
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