A beautiful still night, this photograph taken from the taffrail across to the industrial side of the river.

Very difficult waves made us divert to Sao Jacinto. A little harbour and a small town. We've been here a few day and have explored the little village, found a nice beach and been to the Venice of Portugal, Aveiro.

Fog is keeping us here until Sunday, tomorrow.

Past Cape Finisterre and down the coast on an overnight sail.

Porto is a lovely city. We had a day in a park and a couple of lazy days around the marina eating, playing and sorting the boat out.

Next we head off for Cascais.

We arrived and anchored in Camarinas, had a lovely evening meal in the town after an afternoon at the beach and then went to sleep on-board. Next morning we had a lie-in with a lovely relaxing lunch, again in the town and despite the continuing overnight brisk wind. When we returned to Yves at 3pm, we found her anchor had inexplicably lost its hold on the sea bed and horrifically she was beached 500 metres from where we had left her! Literally beached!!! We got there minutes after she had touched the sand, but she was stuck fast, we tried everything to get her off, fearing we would lose her, our home and all our dreams there and then.

But we should have put the lottery on because she sat between rocks, 20 metres each side, yet she beached on soft golden sand and she was still in one metre of water at low tide (6pm), so didn't hit the ground to damage her port side either. We lived on the walls for a while and we got her off at about 9:45pm when the tide came back in.

What an absolute nightmare. Sorry for the long post, but this is a short summary of events, which included me being interviewed by a Galician regional newspaper.

Also a big THANK YOU to:
– Giles Rezzoagli, a wonderful French gentleman from a neighbouring yacht who helped turn her with our dinghy and a long rope – We hope you enjoy the wine!
– Camarinas Search and Rescue who turned up in the afternoon and gave us some sensible advice in a very calming way and helped get her anchor out 50 metres into the bay with our tender, which again helped us turn her seaward when she floated.

We are all fine, Lotty was fantastic, managing to follow my quick-fire shouted instructions whilst trying to get her off the beach at the beginning. Hector and Phoebe-Plum were amazing, waiting patiently in a boat at a silly angle and unable to stand up for nearly six hours. Yves is amazingly totally undamaged, not a creak or a bump from her from start to finish.

We will never know why the anchor broke free. We had more than enough chain out, but it's an old design. I need to thoroughly investigate this to ensure it never happens again. I can't wait to be off this Galician death coast – Costa da morte…

We set sail for Porto a few days later after a wonderful but eventful stay in Camarinas, a place we will never forget.

High winds on our next leg got us diverting to Corme. A little town with a harbour but no marina. We tried to anchor, but were demanded to go to the quay by the harbourmaster. As it turns out, he did that with no other visiting yachts, just Yves. I suspect we were a great addition to their fiesta that started the next day. We had hundreds of locals coming to look at Yves over the three nights and four days we were there. Fiesta went on one night until 6am, and wow was it loud! Fiesta celebrated the local barnacle, which is a bit Little Britain…

We went to the beaches and enjoyed the little town, but it was very windy on the quay. We did have a lovely time there and it was great to be somewhere without other tourists.

Our next stop, Camarinas

Landing in A Coruna was fabulous. After five heavy days sailing, the land moved up and down and the boat didn't.

Our wonderful friends, John and Miguel, a broken bilge pump requiring a part from the UK, our love for the city and a need for post-Biscay recovery conspired to keep us there for nine nights. We had wonderful times at the beach, museums and eating out with our very generous friends to name but a few of our great times. A hidden jewel of a Spanish city.

Yves, as usual, was much, much admired by a huge number of visitors to the pontoon. Our Yves story is now greatly rehearsed and requires little thought.

I ran the dinghy painter over and wrapped it round the prop as we were reversing in to the berth. A symptom of extreme fatigue. My wonderful sailing knife from Lotty at Christmas and some athletic jumping over the stern into the tender got it free, but needed a mixture of boat hook and diving to get it untangled during our stay.

Then off South to continue our adventure and save ourselves from a horrendous situation in Camarinas…

Amongst the difficulties of sailing in Biscay were mixed some amazing sights. Big dark skies with billions of stars, thunderstorms, porpoises swimming with us and phosphorescence off our wake at night.

The weather was worse than forecast across Biscay with force 3-4 becoming a force 6, gusting to 7. As Biscay novices, five days and four nights of this was pretty horrendous. Lotty was seasick much of the time, but was amazing at looking after Hector and Phoebe-Plum. I sailed the boat and probably got the equivalent of an hour of sleep a day.

This video is one of the calmer, nicer days.

Sorry to all those that follow or look at the blog and don't have Facebook, but we've been sucked into the world of instant sharing. If you want to follow our sailingyves FB page, we'd be delighted. However, I now promise to be more diligent at updating this also.

Here is a shot of us leaving the shores of the UK and Falmouth as we head out to Biscay and the most challenging times of all our lives…