128 Miles to Sardinia
Commonsense
Wed 24 Oct 2012 08:07
With good wind we may just turn hard right about there and go straight to Pantelleria?
On our first night, decent wind from our port quarter pushed us along from midnight until lunchtime for a very pleasant night and morning.
Last night was a bit of a different story. We had good wind, same direction, but some big fronts rolled through and brought a couple of showers. Because it’s dark, I always pull sail in in a squall because I can’t tell what the wind conditions will be and I don’t want to get caught out overcanvassed.
The last one was at about 04:00 and because it was light enough to see I left the genoa up – it was a big long storm but only skinny so I assumed there would be mostly rain and no wind. We just huddled up under the dodger until it passed by.
Party central just before that - I had a cruise liner go past 300 yards off the stern headed for somewhere called Brejiaa? Never heard of it. Must be a port name. 5 minutes later I had a freighter called MSC Claudia cut across my bow line about 1 mile in front. Because of the angle, it looked like it was coming straight at me. One good thing about AIS is that it shows the angle and closest point of approach so there was never any danger, it just looked like it.
09:38 on the third day and there’s no wind, just some left over swell from last night’s storms.