Porto Santo
We left Cascais (Lisbon) at 0800 on Thursday 19th soon to be joined by our friends the dolphins, as is normal.
During the 1st night we put all 3 reefs in the main and rolled away about 2/3rds of the genoa as it was rather windy. The crew felt seasick, one of the symptoms of which was a very loud and frequent belching - it wasn't nice I can tell you, it made me feel a bit ill myself! Anyway, I was all sympathetic etc as I usually am & luckily the crew felt better after a day or 2.
Friday night was a bit of a nightmare: 2 FBS (Fcuking Big Ships) tried to get Vega 1494 in a pincer movement! It was difficult to work out the best way to avoid both FBS so I called one up on the radio & found the watch officer to be very professional. The 2nd FBS didn't even answer his radio so I can only guess there was no one on the bridge! Anyway, of course we altered course and all was well, although it was closer than I normally like to get to a FBS.
In the morning I was surprised to find a squid in the cockpit! We had only really had one wave come into the cockpit but I guess that wave had had a squid in it. The little fella was brown bread & not enough even for a snack so overboard he went. We also saw several turtles during the passage just lazily paddling about looking cute but kind of out of place out there in the big blue.
Thanks to a 7 knot white-knuckle ride on Sunday night and a bit of motoring the next day we arrived at Porto Santo at 2100 on Monday. 524M in 109 hours, our longest passage to date & we felt quite proud of ourselves as we cracked open a couple of well-earned beers!
During the 1st night we put all 3 reefs in the main and rolled away about 2/3rds of the genoa as it was rather windy. The crew felt seasick, one of the symptoms of which was a very loud and frequent belching - it wasn't nice I can tell you, it made me feel a bit ill myself! Anyway, I was all sympathetic etc as I usually am & luckily the crew felt better after a day or 2.
Friday night was a bit of a nightmare: 2 FBS (Fcuking Big Ships) tried to get Vega 1494 in a pincer movement! It was difficult to work out the best way to avoid both FBS so I called one up on the radio & found the watch officer to be very professional. The 2nd FBS didn't even answer his radio so I can only guess there was no one on the bridge! Anyway, of course we altered course and all was well, although it was closer than I normally like to get to a FBS.
In the morning I was surprised to find a squid in the cockpit! We had only really had one wave come into the cockpit but I guess that wave had had a squid in it. The little fella was brown bread & not enough even for a snack so overboard he went. We also saw several turtles during the passage just lazily paddling about looking cute but kind of out of place out there in the big blue.
Thanks to a 7 knot white-knuckle ride on Sunday night and a bit of motoring the next day we arrived at Porto Santo at 2100 on Monday. 524M in 109 hours, our longest passage to date & we felt quite proud of ourselves as we cracked open a couple of well-earned beers!
posted by cinnamon at 10:34 AM
2 Comments:
524 NM! that is a lot, well done, how did you guys adjust and how long did it take for it to happen? (the adjustment to having shifts).
Is your crew competent enough to see when a reef should be put in place? or make any other decisions?
Cheers and keep up the good work
Roger
Hi,
We did adjust to the shifts but I think we made a mistake going hell for leather on the last day in order to make the port in daylight. We ended up burning fuel & paying for an extra night in the expensive marina. We shld have slowed down to arrive the next morning. Having said that, the beer on arrival did taste great!
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