We treated ourselves! We'd been on the hook for over two weeks, so we deserved the convenience of a walk ashore berth! We also deserved the luxury of the Monte Real Club de Yates - the prestigious Baiona yacht club steeped in history, including the Americas Cup. The only downside was that this was to be our first time mooring "med-style". This involves backing up to a pontoon and picking up "lazy lines" or more accurately "slime-lines" as they sit in the water and get fouled, which are secured to the seabed ahead of the boat. By pulling on these and tensioning your stern lines, you can secure yourself just off the pontoon. This sounds easy and in the absence of wind, it is!

So as we approached, the wind picked up on our beam. Nothing too bad for us with twin engines which makes us pretty manoeuvrable. It didn't help that the downwind boat was a tiny racing yacht, so we couldn't lean on it. However the marineiros were great and Mandy was very quick to pass them the upwind stern line whilst taking the upwind slime-line forward to the bow and getting that tight. As she did that, I passed over the downwind stern line and took the bow line forward. We were in! Some adjustment, to get us nicely tied up and we were much relieved,,, The yacht club is in a superb location with a wonderful restaurant and terrace overlooking their pontoons, seen here to the left. The municipal marina is on the right with the anchorage out in the distance. Duplicat was nestled in by a large lagoon catamaran and some smaller racing yachts. We picked up fuel here as well, as it is cheaper than in Portugal. With the lack of sailing we needed just over half a tank (203 litres). Hopefully we get some wind and sailing soon - but the much promised "nortada" winds had disappeared, to be replaced by southerlies! In fact the next week looked pretty poor, wind-wise. The yacht club was a great location but not cheap - so we'd be moving in a few days and we had to decide where! We needed to refill our gas bottle, so we took the dinghy out under Duplicat (no space around the sides of course) and set off past the anchorage to the Repsol roadside fuel station. At the landing we bumped into Peter, from Scilly. We'd bought his guide book to the anchorages in Scilly a few years ago but didn't manage to meet the man himself. Bumping into him in Baiona was a bit of a surprise! He is on a Prout cat heading to the Canaries but will wait for the wind. We decided to push on to Portugal as we had our trip back to the UK booked and needed to make progress towards Lisbon. Unfortunately, it looked like motoring for at least the next couple of stops.

Spain has been superb - surpassed all expectations. We wish we'd make it across from France a bit earlier but that couldn't be due to our repairs at Privilege. So on to Portugal. Famed for 'Port' and officialdom relating to pleasure yachts. Let's go!