The exit strategy through the Strait of Gibraltar can be challenging (see our last post). We got some wise advice before we left that we should stay close to the north shore and head straight out before making the left turn. It feels counter-intuitive not to sail the straight shortest route diagonally across but we followed the advice and it proved correct.
We watched other sailboats that left the same time as us for the Canary Islands and they didn't know or follow the advice. We could see them fall far behind us as they headed out crossing the Strait right away on, no doubt a straight line they had plotted. One of those boats who probably watched us making good progress finally altered course to follow us.
Even though, we still had to motor-sail against a 2.5- to 3-knot current at times, beating into 18 knots of wind. Eventually we were far enough to bear to port and fill the sails for a close haul to round a point off the NW tip of Africa at 19:30.
Sailing off into the sunset
You have heard of things happening in threes. Well, our first during a stiff breeze, a staysail sheet block broke and the violently flogging sheet, narrowly missing Jordan, whipped the strata glass on our dodger so hard it blew a hole in it. (He has since repaired the broken block.)
Our second was when the autopilot mysteriously quit. It has been known to do this for no reason. It's like it says Okay, I just want a break. With several days ahead before landfall, having no autopilot was not a pleasant prospect. We have a wind vane, but in real light or no winds, it doesn't do the job. However, after shutting the autopilot off for 15 minutes and restarting it, it was back to normal.
Our third was when the GPS then quit! Our backup GPS was being repaired, plus we had ordered a new backup that had not yet arrived, so this meant we had none to work with our digital charts on OpenCPN. The solution was to use OpenCPN on another computer where thankfully the GPS worked. What next??!!
We have experienced a variety of weather: warm and sunny, chilly, dreight, and sometimes downright cold. What? you say. Well dreight is a Scottish sea or weather related word told to us by our friends on SV Tahira meaning dull and wet. We have had to run our interior bus heater for warmth occasionally, the first time we have done so since Chile, about 6 years ago. As we're heading south, we were hoping for and expecting warmer weather than this.
On a warm day
On a chilly day
On a dreich day
The trip was also a mixed bag of conditions that had us sailing only part of the time, then either motor-sailing or just motoring, the latter doing too much of. And the seas were jabbly. Another Scottish word from SV Tahira meaning uneven, disturbed.
No luck in catching a fish, but Chanty discovered one that jumped onto the deck during the night and the next morning she found it, albeit dead. She devoured it in ravenous consumption.
After a 5-day passage, we made our first anchorage on November 7th at 10:30 Gibraltar time. (The Canary Islands are 1 hour earlier so we changed our clocks to 09:30.)
No comments:
Post a Comment