Rock dodging in Ría de Arousa

On 24 May we had a fantastic sail from the Ría de Muros around into the Ría de Arousa. This is the second of the four Rías Baixas which we particularly wanted to visit on the west coast of Spain. It’s wider than the other rías and the surrounding scenery has much smaller hills. It is also full of lovely anchorages and sandy beaches and in some areas has very much more of the feel of a holiday resort.

On the way the GPS continued to work perfectly but the log started to read zero again; most puzzling. Under practically microscopic examination, Nicky spotted something and, using a toothpick, managed to winkle out 2 small thin shells, almost like fish scales. The log has worked perfectly since so we think the mystery has been solved.

Between them the Galician rías produce 95% of the total amount of mussels grown in Spain, with Spain harvesting a staggering 60% of the total world’s production. The mussels are grown on ropes hung below bateas; square wooden floating grids about 10 metres across. Ría de Arousa certainly has more than its fair share of them and we found ourselves sailing between them as we made our way to several lovely anchorages.

Look what appeared at low water!                                        Now you see it…                                       …now you don’t!

                                                       Look what appeared at low water!

                                       Now you see it…                                       …now you don’t!

It wasn’t just the bateas which we had to dodge. On our first night we stopped in Ensenada de San Xulián South off Ilsa de Arousa. As we came into the bay Nicky saw something in the water and manoeuvred to make sure that we didn’t hit the small charted rock in the middle of the bay. At low water it turned out to be a little more than you would imagine just looking at the chart, as you can see from the photos above. Whilst we were picking a spot to anchor we also motored directly over the uncharted rock pictured below. The echo sounder showed the shallow area (which we had thought was a sandbank) and so we had moved and anchored in a slightly different location. At low tide we saw our ‘sandbank’; BV had been right over it – definitely not something you want to park your house on!

 

However, our chosen anchor location turned out to be beautifully safe and we had a very relaxing evening eating dinner in the cockpit.

We also spent a night anchored a few miles NE of Cabo Santa Cruz off Punto Porto Mouro and Playa de Triñanes. On Sunday morning the beach had several groups of people enthusiastically gathering shellfish at low water. The weather gods clearly recognised that it was a Bank Holiday weekend in the UK and so, to make us feel more at home, the clear blue skies we have become used to clouded over for Sunday. Today, Monday, is fine so we have moved to anchor off the medieval town of Cambados. We’ve managed to dodged the wacky races departure from the harbour by all of the fishermen and found a spot out of the main channel where we shouldn’t get in the way whilst we dinghy ashore. The harbour is for fishing boats only but Cambados is apparently full of character and as a result is a popular tourist destination so seems to be worth the anchoring off faff. It is also the home to the Albariño wine.