Encore position at 1700 Wed May 15 is 37:21.1N 01:02.4E

Encore
Dermot Cronin
Wed 15 May 2013 15:54
Stephen and Des left us in Almeria on Sunday to fly home from Malaga on Monday last. Both were a pleasure to sail with and hopefully we’ll sail together again in the future.
 
Colm (Fitzpatrick) joined us on Sunday for the rest of our trip to Malta. Due to strong headwinds we delayed our departure until yesterday morning. On waking yesterday, we were met by rain, the very first drops since we departed Malahide on Sun 28 April. We motored out of Almeria in rain and virtual calm and thankfully the rain lasted only for a few hours. The forecast for Tue to Thu is for strong following winds to build so we proceeded cautiously awaiting these. We’ve been looking forward to Colm’s masterchef style cooking and, last night, he served up his ‘Croatian Fish Stew’.... we all declared it was ......“DELICIOUS” ....... a word that Ailvhe, Ellen, Aoife and Nickki might be familiar with?
 
We ended up motoring throughout last night. The ‘westerlies’ did sweep in this morning and it’s been great to be back under sail. The winds have built to F6 so we’ve taken in two reefs to settle the boat for Colm to work his magic tonight......hopefully. His Cookbook is going up on the ‘Malahide Yacht Club’ website soon and we’ll sent you a link to this when it happens.
 
On we go - heading 70degM,  speed 7.5 Kts and wind SW at 22Kts – towards Isola di S. Pietro, 352 miles distant. Now who in Ms Crosbie’s class knows where this small island is? We should get there late Friday or during Saturday.