Hestia and Bert’s stories
Bert and Hestia’s latest adventure
⚓ Flexibility, Spanish Style
Hectic weeks. You make a plan, appointments, dates, the plan, appointments, and dates disappear as quickly as the snow on the Picos, and you end up on an island you’d never heard of. Welcome aboard.
The plan: In April, efficiently haul out alongside a bunch of other multihulls in A Coruña. That’s why we sailed here from Ireland in September. 550 miles, rain, wind, swell in the marina—but hey, A Coruña is a cozy city with excellent coffee.
The reality: Chuny, the marina owner, shrugged. The other multihulls weren’t ready to haul out. And since the Orcas leave us alone until the end of June, we have to get to Madeira before then. So we had a problem.
The solution: Through the grapevine, we heard about a yard on Illa de Arousa—a little island in the Ría de Arousa—with a crane that can lift boats up to 8 meters wide. Hydra is 7.5 meters. Perfect match. 📐
Owner Nito and his son Alex welcomed us like old friends. To every question: “Sí, no problem!” It was almost suspiciously pleasant.
The journey there: 120 miles. About 16 hours of sailing. At night. Around Cape Finisterre. The Costa de la Muerte. The Cape of Death. Not named that for nothing. 💀 We left Friday evening to get ahead of the next low-pressure system. Three hours on watch, three hours sleep, and the land effect played its usual wind tricks:
Reefed sails → wind drops to 3 knots → Hestia shakes out all the sails → “BERT!!!” → 30 knots over the deck.
We got another crash course in quick downwind reefing. 🌬️
Saturday morning 9 a.m.: anchored in the stunning bay of Punta do Portiño. A walk. Hestia swam. Stress evaporated. 🏖️
The haul-out operation… or maybe not.
Monday, we were hauled out with the entire yard workforce—about 12 strong. Grand. Impressive. Photo moment.
And then: “Owners are not allowed to work on the underwater hull.” 🙃
What followed was a classic Dutch-Spanish negotiation spectacle. My direct (read: blunt) approach versus the Spanish art of ya veremos. After hours of tug-of-war, we had a sharp price on the table for full water/sandblasting, primer, and Coppercoat application.
At first, we were quite annoyed. But now that we’ve watched them working for days—and seen how much effort it really is—we have to admit: we seriously underestimated it. 😬
Stay flexible. It’s the only mindset that works here. ⚓🌊
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