HARD SLOG
Next day there is an opportunity to move with small swell. Anything for a small swell. The price is a hard slog against a fierce wind to reach La Coruña. Safety for a few days as more ‘unsailable’ weather marches through. I am welcomed as family by Club Windsurf Oza, and can kip down in their premises, which prevents self-imposed pressure to move on before conditions are truly suitable. Over the next week we drink beer, laugh, manage an afternoon’s racing, and forge new friendships.
Before leaving, the local sailmaker donates a repair to the sail, and I buy a leash for extra security to ensure board (my best buoyancy aid) stays connected to sail. It has long played on my mind the fragility of the primary connecting link. Galicia and its people are wonderful, but the sailing remains difficult and is frequently borderline traumatic: an aborted attempt to make progress from Malpica; Cape Finisterre – the end of the world as the Romans understood it – yet another nervy upwind slog; the next day too wild and aborted by crashing through breaking waves to the port of Lira; Cabo Corrubedo passage, another big swell navigation to a place where sane people don’t visit.
The sensation of being an alien is a familiar one, and I find myself unable to adequately describe the place from where I have come. And the place where I land is always different and new. The spaced-out alien cluelessness perhaps helps make connections where I land, but the great thing is that these unplanned connections happen time and time again. People are collaborative and good; and find a way of providing what’s needed to prepare me for the next battle.
Finally I am inside the Rias Baixas, four estuarine inlets located on the southwestern coast of Galicia, with protection from offshore islands. Here, with the sailing less fraught, but the shadow of open Portuguese waters just a few miles away, the pressure gets to me. I’m tired of the struggle. Fearful of what is to come. It’s not quite a crisis, but I become aware of just how tough the last month has been.