Weather - We've had very mild weather. In the 70s and 80s now, but cooling into the low 60s at nights. Yesterday, during the sunny afternoon, a thick fog came on us.. and by nightfall we could not see the shore 150 feet behind us. Very eerie.

After some good sleep I was out of the bunk Early today in brightening predawn darkness. We went to sleep in fog and a pitching swell off the water, but it rocks us to sleep in bed. OCEAN SWELL is a concern to us here as the North Atlantic sends its weather east and this shore gets the leftover waves from long passed weather systems far out at sea. As to the fog, I am reminded of a Max Shulman book of college humor: The Fog Creeps in on silent cat's paws, and then it moves on.... only sometimes it doesn't. Yesterday noon it came and then thickened. It is totally gone under light skies before dawn today.

AT ANCHOR - We remain at anchor near small cities by a nice white sand beach in about 18 feet of water (plus an 18 foot tide). We are not far from the spot we arrived at about 40 hours ago in this Ria in the middle of Eastern Spain's Atlantic coast. We are 2 Rias - about 30 miles - north of Baiona. (Rias are basically wide fjords or valleys connected to huge bays going back for miles) in this NW Spanish area known as Galicia since Roman times). The area looks a little like the Pacific NW to me.

GALICIA -- Some Galicians seem independent here, though they are are totally Spanish (Spain being a nation made from several former kingdoms). We saw a band of folks led by drums and bagpipes (this is a Celtic area) marching for independence in A Coronia. IMHO the marchers are sort of like the Scotts, who vote in September whether to separate from England - many think they must have had 'good old days' in the past.

ECONOMY - The economy seems to be moderately depressed here, but many modern businesses. Construction seems to be going ahead and much is upgraded at marinas based on older reports we saw. The restaurants are many and humble for the most part with Spanish Tapas (individual sample servings) and Racciones (basically a full meal sized serving of a Spanish dish) being very popular in many street-side restaurants. Sort of like the former old Broadway Grill in Fairfield that was run by Jack and Marty Taylor in the 70s when I got to Fairfield - no white table cloth or pretense.

SHOPPING THURSDAY - Sue and I got our dinghy (we named it Little Pineapple for it's former owner's boat's name) off of the back deck and went into the marina here Thursday... They let us tie up for a few hours Thursday noon without problem. This is a huge fishing harbor of giant commercial boats. The area is near the Mussel capital according to one sign. We went to a humongous GADIS (the Spanish equivalent of HyVee) that equals many of the stores in Eastern Iowa in size and products. Makes shopping in a foreign market fun. It is all priced in Euros so its easy to figure what it costs. Some of the countries in our past travels are harder to shop in because you cannot judge what the cost is in making conversions. The Euro has been at $1 US = 1.35 Euros so we just figure 1/3 of the price marked added on gives us dollar costs.

Recent product find that we like includes non-alcohol Shandy. Shandy was discovered during the visit of Leo and Barb Riegel when we were near Amsterdam and later near Leo's ancestor's brewery in Germany. We find a suspiciously named Alderbrau (think it translates to Eagle Beer in German) marketed here by a Spanish company. It is beer (Cervaza) without alcohol and with lemonade mixed in. It is a wonderful product and is almost dead on for the product we had from Stetfeld Germany that was made mixing their Lemonade with Alderbrau beer. Really refreshing. We bought just a few cans here in Espania, but Sue remarked how much she likes it, and so we will stock up for a quantity while going South. We also bought a lot of fresh food and a couple bottles of wine. I wish we could carry more.

LIMITED COMMUNICATIONS - Our Satellite time is about up... We bought a 500 minute card August 1 of last year for the Satellite phone (an older Iridium 9555). We have renewed it for the Atlantic crossing. We bought it and compression and email software from the GMN (Global Marine Network) folks over the internet (we actually called them after seeing their plans on the internet). Anyway, the time arrived for another years service, so we can easily send these data emails from anywhere in the world a satellite can see, from which it uploads and downloads whenever we check in and whisks the emails back and forth between our floating home and you. We get a cheaper rate if we forego carryover minutes from year to year, so do not activate the new card till the last minute. I will activate it today, so if this is a couple hours late, you can guess I did not get it activated as quickly as needed. Will see if this email goes Whish! on the Mac connected to our Satellite phone. Incidentally the company that rents the compression software and server time to do our emails has developed a nifty little WIFI that just connects to the Satellite Phone and puts a firewall up that keeps any spam from coming in or going out from Angel Louise. It is most important since some programs of users, like Microsoft Windows (not on my machine) and Adobe products (some on my machine) try to take over your connection when you connect & could otherwise do a slow upgrade costing you $100's of dollars worth of minutes without the blocking firewall that only lets out messages I personally send.

NEXT WEEK A RALLY - We need to be in Baiona by Monday. The Ocean Cruising Club (a nice group of sailors you can join if you sail a trip of 1,000 miles non-stop on a boat under 70 feet long - you can be an Associate Member till then) is having a program here in Galicia. It is put on by a Spanish Gentleman named Alfredo Lagos, who is the Honorary OCC port officer here. We will have several cruises to different places on the coast and go by bus to many different sites, and enjoy dinners in wonderful homes and gardens. Should be fun. It starts Tuesday and runs for ten days, but we drop out after 5, as we do not want to sail back too far north into the wind. WE TELL EVERYONE THAT WE SAIL LIKE COLUMBUS DID. IF THE WIND WILL NOT GO THAT DIRECTION, WE WILL NOT EITHER.

Ed and Sue, on ANGEL LOUISE lying on Spains Ribeira