For this cruising in company piece, we were lucky to get the run down from Tim on his first adventure aboard his new Nautitech 44 Open 'Vaihere', traveling from La Rochelle, France to the Spanish Mediterranean.
"We picked up the boat in La Rochelle and commissioned her in about 5 days with the help of Sean Rush and our delivery skipper
David Pritchard. Nautitech put us on to David and he was excellent. The only frightening episode was visiting the hardware stores and chandleries. The credit card is still recovering.
We set off with David, my partner Kylie, and a buddy Perry.. The dreaded Bay of Biscay was like a glass tabletop with the excitement factor being whales, dolphins, and catching lots of fish. We managed to get the code O up briefly but otherwise we motored across the swimming pool. We ended up taking shelter in A Coruna overnight when a southerly change blasted us. Vaihere coped well with the short sharp seas on the nose.
A severe weather warning was issued so we ducked down to Porto and sailed up the river Duro. Porto is a beautiful town and we were lucky enough to catch the World Cup Rugby at the local Irish bar. We ended up holed up in the marina for a week whilst the ocean swells smashed into the breakwall.
Due to time constraints we decided to take advantage of favorable winds and sailed past Lisbon, through the Straits of Gibraltar and up into the Spanish Mediterranean without stopping.. The highlight was running past Gibraltar in the middle of the night, with the gennaker set averaging 10-12kts in 25Kts of breeze whilst dodging multiple cargo vessels on the AIS and radar. WE reached a top speed of 18kts and Vaihere was as solid as a rock. We ended up at Sant Carles de Rapita Marina after a sailing passage of 4 days. All up we clocked up over 1500nm. We absolutely love our new home.
