Engine failure & fog

To escape the fish smell Kiarash and i decided to go into Porto quite quickly. The others decided to spend the restday at/on the boat, which actually amazes me. They had done thw same in Portimão, not even really gone for walks. After some days of being stuck on our 50ft boat, i really need some time outside of it and to move my legs a bit. Also for me part of the adventure is to wander through random towns we end up in, its very interesting to me how the others are totally satisfied just
being on the boat, even when not on the water.
Still we didnt do much in Porto, since we were both exhausted, we had some solid coffee, i studied some farsi he did some work.. when we came back for the Gnocchi Salad, we were gonna have for dinner, the others had just noticed that our fridge had overperformed at its job and our Gnocchis were completely frozen. We spontaneously decided to go out for food and had a very simple, yet very tasty burger.

Our pitstop in Porto ended up being a short one, as the weather forecast being rather windy and not so great, we decided to go to A Cornuña after all. From here we would be able to set off for Biscaya more spontaneously and could therefore could take better advantage of windows with less wind and better conditions.
Back on the water, we had sailing wind for approximately an hour, before we had to turn the motor on again, i had the first moment of really realizing that sailing with no wind, or with very constant wind is actually mostly doing nothing all day. Every few hours maybe you adjust the course, sometimes you change the sail settings but thats it. So i got another productive Farsi lesson in - i know uncovered half the alphabet (reading and writing) and can form some sentences about my family in persian. If i continue this way with my studying, i might actually be able to have a little conversation with Kiarash's family in January or actually read also the arabic alphabet writing of farsi (in everyday texting persians mostly use roman alphabet to spell farsi words, and therefore in chats etc you barely see Arabic letters).

My night shift was starring into the black and trying to fall asleep. But also my  absolute highlight on this trip happened: the atlantic ocean at the moment is in the season of a lot of glowing: some organisms in the water that are bioluminescent, set of by movement in the water. Meaning every breaking wave glows in the dark. But also meaning that the dolphins that came out to play during my nightshift, were not only visible but seemed to be moving surrounded by glowing blue/white light, also making them visible when just swimming underwater. All their movement was traced by what looks like the chemtrails that airplanes leave on the sky - it was breathtaking and more random made up for not seeing any starts that night...

The next morning i got woken up with the words "we have engine failure, we need you on deck cause you are the only one speaking spanish".
I came on back to a big chaos full of oil, bottles with diesel tools etc, and out of the fog appearing a fisher boat with some guy on it. My task: ask them if they have a diesel filter. I dont know what confidence the crew had in me, but i dont even know what a diesel filter is or does in german, so in spanish well..
Un Flitro por gasolina? Algo por filtrar el diesel? Well i tried, in my pjamas, against the sound of the waves and the wind to get our problem across to the spanish fisherman who also definitely mumbled his answers. I dont think he wanted to understand us, he only offered to tow us a few times- something he would get money for.
After they were gone Kiarash dared to make fun of me struggling with spanish and told me i could've just explained the problem and what it exactly is that we needed. I answered that would have been helpful if i knew what exactly our problem was and what exactly diesel filters are 😅🤨.
But hey apparently an experienced skipper also becomes sort of a mechatronik, since Muki after taking apart the whole motor and debating every possible option, also attempting to clean the diesel filter with his toothbrush - he actually found the problem (something else was also blocking the entry to the filter, if i understood correctly) and managed to actually fix it!!
After a few hours of trying to sail just with the gennaker and almost no wind and estimating to now need 10 hours to La Coruña if we get lucky and the wind turns at the right time - we were back to our ETA of 5h until La Coruña.
We were moving again and also got rewarded instantly : suddenly dolphins showed up, but not one or two, no probably like 20-30 dolphins all around our boat, for like 20mins. Amazing, absolutely amazing.
We also saw some purple, blue portuguese manowars, none of us had ever seen before floating by.
Very lucky actually cause our visibility was still at around 50m to all directions until the thick white fog started that kind of gave me a feeling of being the only people in the world. Also cause on water, the view literally stayed the same, for hours, no changes. At some point Toni and me w
were just starring at the waves, and the fog and tried to make out anything. When we actually saw a ton, that our map was showing us, for the first time after hours, we got so excited that Muki came running on deck to see what happened.
Apart from that we found that in our bilches, the floor boards under which most of our food is stored, an oat milk had been too close to the hot water pipes (what were the useful for anyway?) For too long and had not just gone bad but also burst. So half an hour we were entertained by taking the rest of the juices and milk cartons out of the bilch, showering them, and cleaning the fermented oat smell from the boat..
Also when we were getting closer to La Coruña (finally) we found on our map that on one of the tiny rock islands in front, someone had marked a sauna on google maps and it even had some reviews. Not actually believing, but maybe kinda hoping, that a sauna was actually there we drove really close but ofc someone had just pulled a very good practical joke.

And finally we arrived. Shortly before dark we made it to La Coruña in the fog, by far the most exhausting part of this journey for now. All happy to be there we made a big, tasty dinner and had lots of really funny, hood conversations before an early night of sleep.

This morning i woke up with zero energy. Although i had slept a lot i was dead. Still i had to get up, we were all exhausted but the boat had to be prepared: we will get two new crew members today, and also have to leave again tomorrow morning. So i started my day with coffee (Toni had made coffee🙏)
Next came cleaning, and shopping.
And then once everything was ready (just exactly right now) the forecast changed again, and we will stay in La Coruña u til monday at least. While wind in Bay of Biscay is always strong 45 knots of forecast is too much for our boat.
So seems like we get to relax a bit after all, and watch the funny little parade/carneval that seems to be going on in La Coruña, next to the triathlon that is already causing a lot of disruptions in the entire city center and surrounding the port.Læs mere