So I last crossed Biscay aged about 19 when doing a yacht delivery, and it counts as singularly one of the worst moments in my life, and there have been a couple. Honest to God we all thought we were going to die, and so you can imagine how excited I was to be crossing it again. Its a large bay bound by the west coast of France and north coast of Spain, and is known for it’s rough seas and violent storms , and is one of the many feared seas by sailors due to it’s exposure to the Atlantic ocean (thanks Wikipedia). The average depth is about 2000 metres and goes to about 5000 at it’s deepest, dropping off from the continental shelf where the depth is about 100 metres which makes matters considerably worse.

We had to wait out for 4 days in Île d’Yeu for the bad weather to pass, and thankfully, due to the lack of time constraints, neither of us having anything to prove, insurance and technology we were as optimistic as we could be that we had a good weather window to cross safely. Despite this we had exit routes planned in case anything unforeseeable happened, and our main plan was to head to Gijon if necessary, but not something we really wanted to do if possible as it would add up to 2 more days to our crossing.

Well we definitely had good weather!

The first day the wind averaged 4 knots gusting 8, which on a good day Franco can fart stronger winds than that. We tried everything, tacking out 10 miles (this is like zig zagging your way to where you want to try and get the wind at a decent angle to your sails, but in reality is a pain in the butt that takes twice as long to get anywhere and you barely seem to make any progress except towards the divorce court). Lee eventually gave in and put Yanny on, and to thank him for his wise decision and 7 wasted hours of my life I will never get back again I fed him, and finally watched Île d’Yeu slowly vanish from view behind us.

And then suddenly there is nothing. NOTHING. Just sea as far as the eye can see in any direction and to be honest it’s a little disconcerting. The weather was lovely though, so we pootled along and eventually caught up with Cap’n Ron, had a chat on the radio and carried on. We did 2 hour watches over night, and as soon as Lee would get in bed he would be sound asleep before his head even hit the pillow while I would lie there imagining whales crashing into us, miles of sea underneath us and every other thing you probably shouldn’t be thinking about on crossings such as these.

The wind picked up enough on the second day to turn the engine off and after a few well chosen words of encouragement the cruising chute was up and we were off, taking it down for the overnight passages. We passed the time playing scrabble until a C went overboard and we unanimously decided there were too many words containing this invaluable letter for scrabble to continue to be a viable option so we threw it in a cupboard, played with the dog, read and listened to audio books instead. After 53 hours Franco finally went chi chi and was rewarded with a hose down, ear scratch and duck.

I had now started to become fixated on the abundance of lobster pots instead of lighthouses, as we had found hundreds of them at every place we had been, so Lee decided to slow us down so we would enter A Coruña in daylight. All was going well until on the last night while on watch, at about 0200 hrs I had a bit of a moment. I have never been particularly fond of the dark at the best of times, and suddenly felt myself struggling to breath as it was SO dark. I mean REALLY dark. There was no delineation between the sea and the sky, and it was like we were sailing through space. It was the oddest sensation, and I realised I was having a panic attack. A proper one! I used the doorbell we have in our cabin to wake Lee up who was so understanding and sweet that that unsettled me even more! I stayed awake the rest of the night with Lee in the cockpit and we inched our way closer to our destination. Even then the lights which we could see by now were confusing, as they look so close even though the chart plotter and charts tells you they are miles away. This wasn’t helped by the radar picking up vessels which weren’t on AIS and the newly installed chart plotter system shutting down for about an hour just after Lee told me to trust the instruments. Yeah right. That’s why we also use paper charts!

We entered A Coruña at about 0730 hrs on the Saturday and by 0800 hrs were drinking a bottle of lovely fizz that Russ and Lisa Harding from Jazzmine had given us, with strict instructions to be opened after we had crossed the Bay of Biscay.

By 1000 hrs we were all fast asleep with a tick in the box firmly against one of the rites of passages for little people like us; crossing Biscay.