Biscay

Monday 7th July.

Biscay. The very word spells doom and disaster to mariners, the list of wrecks littering the coast is endless so when Susan asks what my strategy was I’m sorry to say that I didn’t really have one, I hoped for good weather, without it I was staying put, and I used a bit of common sense but the truth is that I was not looking forward to this at all, I was worried and I was more than a little scared and I don’t mind admitting it. If I could have avoided it I would as for me the big problem being single handed has always been sleep depravation; it is my Achilles heel, I just can’t function without good quality sleep, its not a new problem I’ve had it since as long as I remember I just get to a point when I just have to sleep and if I don’t I start to feel really sick and bad tempered.
From Royan I had two options; I could go due south along the French coast and put in at the only two harbours, Arcachon & Cap Breton. This would take me right into the corner and probably make me late for my next liaison with Debbie or I could go straight across to Gijon, Bilbao or even La Corunna. Most people do the latter option because with a strong westerly i.e. an on shore wind you cannot enter either Arcachon or Cap Breton as the swell makes the entrances just too dangerous. Matters are made worse by the fact that from the mouth of the Gironde to almost the Spanish border and extending 45 miles offshore is the gigantic Landes missile test range which is a huge no entry area, apart from Saturday and Sunday, it is in fact the area Ted went to in HMS Edinburgh & I remember when he came back and asked if I was going across Biscay which I said I was he rolled his eyes and said good luck. Apparently a good proportion of the ship’s crew had been seasick!!
I looked at the forecast it was perfect I could expect a steady westerly 15-20 knots which would be ideal and Bilbao was one of the places I wanted to see so I set off at about 8pm Saturday night and sailed out of the Gironde with a fast tide pushing me on towards Spain.
No sooner was I out of the Gironde when I ran into a torrential thunderstorm, at first I thought I had run into a missile test with all the flashes and bangs but the rain was unbelievable and I got absolutely soaked and I wasn’t going to spend the next 40 hours in wet pants so after the storm had passed I went to change and to hang my wet coat out to dry and no sooner had I got back on deck when a rogue wave came crashing over the deck soaking me again …. Fantastic!
The main thing that makes Biscay so disconcerting is the endless rolling waves, they are really huge about 5-8m and they come about every 10 seconds so one moment you are sitting in a trough and a wall of water higher than your boat moves towards you and you sit there looking at it and some how you just don’t believe its not going to go straight over you and drag you out of the boat but at the last minute your boat gently rises until you are on the crest and then you look at the trough you are going to fall into and you think oh no I’m going to tumble down this wave front but you don’t then it happens again and you clench everything and again and you clench some more, At least I will have buns of steel when I finish! I was hoping to see a whale or a sun fish but I saw nothing except a Swift which hitched a ride for an hour or two, I didn’t even see another vessel until I was off the Spanish coast so it seemed endless and very very boring! I have no idea why anyone would want to sail single handed over oceans it’s just beyond me.
Anyway I could not have wished for better sailing conditions, I averaged over 5.5 knots all the way, which is 1.5 knots faster that I expected, arriving 20 miles off Bilbao at about 3 am it was still dark and another storm was raging so visibility was poor and it was at this point that I started to hallucinate!! It was absolutely weird I could see shapes in the water and even worse I could see a factory with wagons and a huge car park off my port; I could see these clearly I could see detail and it was utterly convincing so I tacked away from it and went to check my charts and GPS both of which said that there was nothing there! I started to panic; do I believe my eyes or the GPS; is it there or is it not? Do I risk running aground in the dark in bad weather or do I not? These are not decisions you want to have to make. All this time whilst I’m deliberating I’m running down wind so now I’ve gone to far and I can’t sail around the headland to get into Bilbao without tacking up through the wind, I thought I’d use the engine to help me a little so I started it but almost straight away I realised I could smell burning…. Shit……double shit…… I opened the hatch to be engulfed in a cloud of acrid smoke…..I had an electrical fire somewhere, there was no time to investigate so I turned the engine off got my sailing head back on and gritted my teeth.
It took me another 6 hours to sail the last 20 miles and I cannot tell you how I felt without x-rating the site… suffice to say that if I had to do it again I would burn the boat and catch a plane……. Enough said!
I landed at the first marina walked up to the Capitania, he’s the guy who takes your money then tells you your lucky to have a berth, and in my best Spanish which remember I have been studying for 3 years now I said “Hello do you have a berth for 3 nights, I’m married and I want to go bed”…………..not surprisingly he said they were full. The words for tired and married are not dissimilar after 40 hours awake!! I tried the next marina which had a space I tied up then just sat on the dock for over an hour just gazing at nothing, I could not believe I’d made it, I felt sick but so bloody relieved, the fire turned out to be my alternator which had gone into meltdown and before you say it Pete I know “I should have bought a Bukh”