Islas Cíes II ⚓

We woke up to the sound of boat engines, generators and Spanish shouting. Bart first stuck his head out of the window and to his surprise saw that we and the Lotus (Henk and Sylvia) were surrounded by about 10 small fishing boats. They were still a couple of meters away so we decided to embrace this interesting start of our day. A few minutes later I also stuck my head out of the window, and greeted the Spanish fishers with an enthusiastic "Holla", which they apparently found hilarious. One of the boats, with two young guys, was getting closer and closer up to the point that their navigation light was getting stuck in our sea rail. They also tried to tell us "no te puede estar aquí", you cannot be here, at least that what I thought I heard. The first thing I thought, will I think you cannot be here, since fishing is not allowed in Islas Cíes. At least, so I thought. Turns out traditional fishing is allowed!

Even though we had to right to anchor in the spot we were in, since we had an anchoring permit, we decided to move Nimrod a bit. We weren't just surrounded by the fishers and their boats, but also a lot of their ropes. Anchor ropes and fishing ropes. Just starting the engine and lifting up the anchor wasn't that easy. We first had to make sure our anchor, anchor chain, keel, rudder and our prop were free of ropes. We moved Nimrod a good bit further away from the fishers. We quickly decided to move once more. Not because of the fishers, but shallow waters this time. After moving twice we were satisfied with our new spot.

We took our dinghy to visit Lotus. First, we took a little detour to have a little chat with our young fisher friends. We were filming them and they were filming us, because the situation was quite funny and unusual. Turns out they fish everyday all around the rias from 8 till about 2 pm. The two of them are a team and share their daily catches. They fish for almeja rubia (blonde mussels). They use very long poles with a sort of basket attached at the end. They wiggle the poles across the sea bottom. When they bring the baskets back up, they catch between 5 to 15 mussels. They have to throw the small ones back in. A sort of inspection boat goes from one boat to another to inspect whether the mussels are big enough.

They let me try to fish as well and it was very heavy. It wasn't a big success. We asked them if we could buy some mussels from them but that wasn't possible. We went back to the Lotus. The evening before we went over for a drink and end up making dinner together around 10pm and didn't go to bed until 1 am. You could say we had a good time together. Lotus had chosen to stay at their anchor spot, as the fishing boats around them were still quite far away. Until they had a rope going under their boat that seemed to be stuck. The fishers asked if they could move, but they couldn't because of the rope. Bart first jumped into our dinghy to push them away but that didn't work for long. Henk had to go into the water to untangle the rope and anchor buoy that apparently had gotten stuck under the boat. They were free as well.

Some time later when we were back on Nimrod, we heard from Lotus they had been able to buy some mussels. We tried our luck with two older fishers whose rope was surrounding our Nimrod. They didn't seem to have time for it, but did speed over to the last fishermen still fishing and they disappeared. We thought we had lost our chance at mussels until the last man standing come over to our boat and he was willing to sell us some almeja rubia! He brought out a secret stash which he was willing to sell to us. He also had a couple of really big ones laying on deck, but those he was going to keep himself, he told us with a big smile.

We spent the afternoon on the gorgeous beach of Isla de San Martino. We already went over earlier that day closer to low tide when the beach still consisted of shells. Later in the afternoon we enjoyed a lovely sandy beach because of the higher tide. The water is still freezing here, so I only went in for a quick swim. Since the beach was quickly disappearing we went back to the boat. Henk and Sylvia joined us to make a feast for dinner with our super fresh seafood. Their mussels were a lot bigger and white, while ours were a bit smaller and red. We ate the big ones as our first course and made a sort of spaghetti vongole with our smaller ones. Both were absolutely delicious and we had another fun night together with the Lotus.Read more