Blue Sky's Voyage
George & Michael
Sat 3 Jun 2006 19:58
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Hello All. This is the very first entry on
our Blog with Mailasail. We hope to use this as the main diary as it can be
added to easily by email in contrast with the main website which needs a
broadband connection to edit.
This note covers the first month of what may
turn out to be a world cruise, which has taken us from Plymouth across to Ushant
and along the French coast to La Rochelle; then across to the northern tip of
Spain and down the west coast of Spain and Portugal. We did fail to meet up with
any of the friends and family as planned - maybe there is a lesson to learn and
we should have cut south across Biscay to Spain.
We have had some great sailing, though a
fair bit of motoring too and a couple of very rough days crossing Biscay from La
Rochelle to northern Spain. We have seen many dolphins, three pilot whales and
more recently some much larger dolphins south of Lisbon. We need a book to
identify the types - perhaps we'll get one in Gib.
We introduced Matt from
St Ives (pictured with outboard) to sailing and took him as far as La Rochelle.
In Lisbon, we picked up Andreas from Sweden and we still have Andy who joined us
in Plymouth.
Pic - Matt and Andy fixing outboard
to tender in Ile d'Yeu using the Ian M Pass patent outboard
harness.
 We are now anchored comfortably just SE of
Cape Sao Vicente (the SW tip of Portugal) and George is starting to prepare
supper. The log has just cicked over 4,000 miles and Michael has just taken his
first swim of the year (water 18.5 degrees).
Today we used our new carbon spinnaker pole
for the first time - and very satisfactory it was too. Very light and easy to
rig - probably due to the excellent installation by Eurospars of Plymouth! All
the new systems have worked well (thank you Waypoint-1) though we haven't yet
commissioned the watermaker.
We hope you enjoy keeping up with progress -
do let us have any suggestions for the website or blog pages.
Tomorrow we are off to Faro for a day or two
and then probably across to Cadiz.
best wishes
George & Michael
Pic - fishing boats in Carino, just S
of Cape Ortegal, NW Spain.
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