Ria Arosa

We had another nice light wind sail down to the Ria Vigo from Muros with no swell and lots of sunshine. Anchored off Aguino and went for a walk ashore. Aguino is just outside the Ria Arosa and therefore not protected from the swell and Southerly wind as we were to find out at about 7am the next morning when the wind picked up to 25k + and a 2ft wind swell started bouncing us around a bit. I sat up for 4 hrs and took bearings and sweated over the anchor holding, but all was well so I went back to bed for a nap around 1100. I woke 2 hrs later and things had calmed down so we decided to head into the Ria and find a more protected anchorage. The day turned out fine with a nice slow sail up to Carimanal at the NE end of the Ria.

This is the sort of scenery that never really gets boring in the Spanish coast!

 

And this too !

 

The Ria’s are basically the rivermouths of the Spanish rivers. Some are up to 15 miles deep by 10 miles wide, so there is a lot to see and a lot of places to visit and explore, from huge cities to smaller towns to secluded bays. There are quite a lot of Vivero’s (floating mussel rafts) in some parts so its best to navigate them in daylight hours.

We anchored off the very nice little villiage of Carimanal (recomended by the customs guys in Muros) and it was a beautiful place to rest a few days from sailing.

A quiet well protected anchorage with pods of dolphins paying regular visits and a nice little village for some land based treats. The fisherman and women came at low tide to scrape the sand and weed for mussels (hard work !) and didn’t seem to collect much for their labour. The kids sailed their optimist dinghies being herded and looked after my the instructors in the zodiac, like ducklings with their mother hen.

We stayed 5 nights before continuing and heading over to Isla de Arosa, an island in the middle of Ria Arosa, wich was beautiful ! We swam to shore from Sephina and Jenijane practiced her snorkelling with Balrog hot on her  heels. After spending the afternoon there we sailed around to the other side to anchor but it wasn’t suitable, so we headed to the more protected Anchorage at Ribeira, ready to leave the Ria Arosa the following day to continue our Southward Voyages.