45.36.49N 03.38.44W
20:00- 26 Jun 2016

Log by Pete

EXITEMENT

Last night at about 21:45 I was woken by 1st mate Youle from my off watch sleep. I didn't mind too much as I was in the middle of a nightmare in which we had voted to leave the EU. Relief, of course, was short lived.

Anyway Ist mate reported that we had been followed for the last 20 minutes or so by an helicoptor. When it started making hooting noises she thought she had better wake me up!

A quick call to it on the VHF established that it was a chopper from the Spanish rescue services, and they were wondering if we would be willing to assist in an excerise they wanted to carry out. We were of course happy to co-operate.

To cut a long story short, they lowered a man via winch, the sea and our dinghy onto Mukti, They then lowered a dummy onto Mukti to represent a casualty. The rescue man then harnessed the casualty dummy, lets call him Desmond, to himself. He then jumped into the sea, via our dinghy and he an Desmond were winched back up to the chopper. The whole thing took about half an hour and was very noisy and chaotic.

I have to say I was very impressed with their skills, although poor old Desmond looked rather the worse for wear!

More on Facebook tomorrow, with pics.

The wind has finally started to behave itself, and we are now sailing at between five and 7 knots to our destination. At the present rate we should make landfall around mid-morning tomorrow. Best had as we are out of curry!!