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Girolle - Day 7 & 8 - Arrival in Bayona, R&R time



Second ‘Hoorah, we’ve made it’; this time to our official stop off in Bayona. You may be tiring of dolphins by now but I feel I should mention the most amazing experience we had during the early hours of Saturday. As I stumbled bleary eyed into the cockpit for my watch at 3am, Dave beckoned me over with excitement and said “look over here, look for the white streaks in the water” Initially I saw nothing and couldn’t work out what I should be looking for. Then suddenly, what looked like a white streak of paint appeared beside the boat... the dolphins were back! Sometimes four streaks would appear at once, all merging towards each other. Looking behind the boat I could see several white streaks approaching. The water was reasonably translucent and occasionally I could make out the shape of a dolphin just under the surface close to the boat. Seeing them like this at night was even more special and it continued throughout my watch. Had the same dolphins been swimming with us for many miles? Why weren’t they tired?
I thought I heard dolphin chatter at one point, but when alone during the early hours I would often hear various noises and question whether I was imagining things. However, Andy confirmed that after dawn the dolphins were still there and chattering so maybe I hadn’t imagined it after all.
We arrived in Bayona around 11am, various boats arrived throughout the afternoon and crews’ experiences of Storm Miguel began to circulate amongst us. Holgen & Simone, Germans on board their boat Tohuwabohu, arrived mid-afternoon which was a huge relief. They were only a crew of 2 and had headed West prior to the storm. They had many technical issues prior to the Plymouth start line, which almost prevented them from taking part; we knew they were struggling to get weather updates and those of us who were in contact with them prior to the storm had lost contact with them and were concerned as we didn’t know how they were. They looked absolutely exhausted coming in to the marina and apparently hadn’t slept for several days. Dave greeted them with 2 glasses of Merlot and 2 donuts! Holgen has been very modest in acknowledging their achievement but they, along with the other boats caught up in Storm Miguel, are all heroes.
Yesterday evening, everyone who had arrived, gathered at the yacht club for welcome drinks, followed by a delicious meal at the El Tunel restaurant in town. Lots of chatter and laughter ensued as everyone got to meet each other and swap stories.
Today we are having some well earned ‘R&R’. Not surprisingly there has been quite an amount of ‘boat tinkering’ going on. Some people have ventured into Bayona, others are relaxing on deck in the sunshine.
Zafiro arrived late last night as did our friends on Lyonie. It’s been great to be reunited with everyone after such an eventful week. Each time I see Rob from Zafiro and his daughter walk past Girolle they are carrying armfuls of bags of one sort or another, I can’t imagine what they have left on board!
Final thought for the day... having never written a blog before I am receiving some lovely feedback about my ramblings. I felt almost famous earlier when two visitors stopped at Girolle. Their opening words were “You must be Sue, we’ve been following your blog” Wow! I almost fell overboard in amazement! Thank you to (who I now know are) Miguel and Rita for such lovely comments, as well as the other positive feedback to Dave via various messages (you know who you are) and to Fair Isle for their lovely comments also. The pressure is now on to keep things interesting!
We look forward to welcoming Miguel and Rita to the rally later in the week at our next stop off at Povoa de Varzim.
Time to sign off. No sailing to get back to today so we shall continue soaking up the surroundings of beautiful Bayona.

Photo: Girolle and her crew on arrival in Bayona


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