6th August 1700UT Guardamar Marina 183 miles
I think that, without much doubt, the last 24 hours have been some of the
busiest and most significant of the whole journey so far.
As reported, we passed Tarifa at 1430UT yesterday and had enjoyed a
tremendous days sailing prior to this. This, obviously, isn't the whole
story because the day started with our continuing attempts to find a course
that would move us closer to our waypoint without losing all of the wind
from our sails in the short, steep seas. We tried a variety of courses and
sail set-ups, including a foray into the traffic coming out of the Med, and
back again! Eventually, however, the wind began to lift us and, by lunchtime
we were charging towards the right bit of land. The sailing was excellent,
the weather clear and sunny and morale was definitely on the up! Tacking
200yds or so from a beach, with plenty of bemused onlookers was only 1 good
bit. The dolphin show which I was able to film and send home to my son, Ben,
was another. The, at times, 4 knots of assisting tide was yet another.
Basically, by the time we reached Tarifa, life was pretty good and continued
until we had the famous Rock of Gibraltar within range. Then the fog came!
And boy was it good stuff. 20 m visibility horizontally although you could
still see the sun, and later the moon! With more than 20 contacts on AIS and
fog horns sounding all around us we had to be very careful, but as you would
expect after this long together, our team work is excellent and we picked
our way carefully through the contacts. We even, when the time was
appropriate, managed our 'welcome to the Mediterranean' beer and nibbles.
This is extreme cocktail partying at its best!
We left the rock behind us but not the fog. That was with us all night so we
modified our watchkeeping system to 2 on and 20 off and kept a very close
eye on things until the weather started to clear at about 0800UT this
morning. There has been haze on the horizon all day and it looks more now
than at any other time so we hope that the fog is not returning.
Today started light but increased to allow us to fly the cruising chute. We
now have full main and head sail and are going well. We are heading inshore
so a gybe is on the way in an hour or so. After that it will be 55 miles to
Cabo de Gata then 125 miles to the marina with our intended arrival time of
0800UT (1000am local). You note the use of the word 'intended' because we do
not want to get home in the dark so will take our time to ensure that
doesn't happen.
It has been a great 2 days and we are both very happy to be in the Med. We
are equally excited about the prospect of bringing Jemima home and the sense
of achievement that will come from this. Andy will finally get a chance to
reflect on his particularly amazing journey and, for me, things will start
to sink in when I get back to Scotland.
More tomorrow, from a lot closer to home.....
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