07 Aug 09 1630UT 85 nm to Guardamar!
With very light breezes, or no breeze at all, the poor old Perkins has been
logging up even more hours. Its counter now stands at 5870 hours total,
which is a long time by any measure and a very good advert for these
reliable machines.
We had a full moon last night which provided exceptional overnight light.
Dawn saw us rounding Cabo de Gata and turning Northwards. Sometimes
referred to as Spain's "mini Cape Horn" Cabo de Gata was like the
proverbial boating lake this morning. The shore here is a national park and
largely undeveloped mountains roll down to the sea, with small coves and
some beautiful beaches visible. This is so different from the coastline
further north and the developments which spoil the views. Sea temperature
is back up to 30 degrees, warm even for the Mediterranean but everybody
tells us it has been exceptionally hot down here since I left in early May.
However, typically it is forecast to rain tomorrow but we will not be
letting it rain on our little celebration on arrival home. We anticipate
this to be around 1000 local time on Saturday and keep reminding each other
to remember we are running the boat on UT and hence as soon as we arrive,
the local time is 2 hours later! That means the bars will be open and we
agree we have earned a little cold beer served at a table which stays
stationary.
We have done some routine cleaning and maintenance tasks to day, in
anticipation of our arrival and this super old boat shows little sign of
having covered over 9000 miles since leaving these waters in late March.
It has seemed like quite a long time since sailing from Horta and half a
century since slipping our mooring in Newport nearly 5 weeks ago. It has
been an interesting voyage of discovery, sometimes frustrating, sometimes
exciting but one which has been fascinating and a true life experience. We
have suffered no significant gear failures and the boat never gave us any
concerns. We used a formal watchkeeping routine which worked very well for
the 2 of us but one which offered flexibility when needed and we both agree
it was very successful. We ate better as time passed, mainly due to
improved sea legs and acquired skills in the galley when the objects of our
interest were often moving targets and when we had only 1 hand to try and
catch them!
A final blog posting is planned for post arrival tomorrow.
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