Burela, the unexpected stopover, 5-7 September 2022

Belisama in Burela harbour

One could most probably only end-up in Burela to escape some sort of storm as we tried to escape when we ended-up in this fishing boat harbour. Zero place for visiting ships, and only a rough outside jetty to moor on. But most welcome in any case given the weather forecast in the aftermath of the Danielle tropical hurricane!

We had very strong head winds on the way, in the 15 m/s (30 knots), with high swell, making it very difficult to progress through tacking in such conditions. We decided to head on engine for couple of hours in order to progress towards a shelter, as it was no way we would reach A Coruña in decent time given these navigation conditions. We made it at sunset as conditions improved temporarily, just to watch the fishing boats leaving the harbour for a night fishing at sea.

As we arrived at the end of the day, we went all around the harbour to realise that there were no visitor places and no free spots except at the very tip of the entrance jetty. We moored there on the first evening and the following morning, the harbour authorities granted us permission to stay there for two days.

Nice to get a spot for the night, but without a pontoon, and given the three metres tide amplitude every six hours, I had to remember an old trick that I learned from François on Cybèle 17 while sailing in the Lofoten. You need to fix a mooring line along a pier ladder from the lowest to the highest tide level, and hook your beam mooring line on these ropes using a carabiner. If not too much exposed to winds, the fenders will do the job, keeping the boat aligned along the pier as it goes up and down with the tides. Whenever you can, it is best to have the ladder mooring line attached as a continuous line around the ladder, so that you can remove it at any time of the tide. I started doing this but then realised that given the winds, the line would be likely damaged and even break. However, we were lucky to arrive at low tide and depart at low tide so that we could attach the line to top and bottom. By the way, given the conditions, we even used two lines for these two days, without a glitch. 

After 48 hours in Burela we decided to depart given more favourable conditions. But with 3 m/s (6 knt) of head wind, we had to sail on engine for pretty much the entire 77 miles that we had to cover to reach A Coruña.