After my aborted attempt to get to Gijon(EE-HON they tell me) on the
13th I tried again on the 27th. The weather forecast looked as if it would
be of some use and get me there quite quickly. This time I had got an extra
30 litres of diesel in an attempt to ensure my arrival. The weather was
supposed to have a north west wind coming round to west. West is not so good
but we can still make use of it.
I started out all bright and cheerful on Friday at 11.55 and was
going to motor out to the wind and take it from there. I motored out and
motored on, watching to see if the red duster was even going to flicker, no
it didn't. Because the weather forecast had been so helpfulI had not
considered I would use a lot of fuel doing this motoring out bit, so I had
quite a high consumption rate, so I started to backit down a little, and was
soon into the same economy system as I had been previously, and had already
changed my destination to Bilbao, Saturday came and with it a little wind,
not much but some. During Saturday I ran my battery consumption test and
found that I could run for 9.5 hrs with all the equipment on as long as I
started with a fully charged up battery, of course this would have been
longer if the wind had been stronger, but this is very encouraging, after
all one battery is only half my capacity, and with more wind we could
probably survive a long time without the engine. I believe a 15-20kts wind
would make the engine redundant on a long run. This 9.5 hrs was all fuel
saving time and even when I had to start the engine to cgarge the battery my
speed was about 4kts with the engine charging because of the wind. All good
things come to an end and Saturday evening the wind dropped so we were back
to motoring, in the hope the wind would return on Sunday, it didn't! I was
now out on a bit of a limb, I was still heading towards Bilbao and hadn't
got enough fuel to motor back and, even with the extra 30 litres it was very
iffy if I had enough to go on, either way I was done for, so , for a short
while I sat and waited for the wind, as they must have done in sailing ship
days. It was ever so peaceful and quiet, During this period I suddenly
noticed a disturbance in the water about half a mile away, small fins kept
on popping out of the water around the disturbed area, I tried to get photos
but it was too far away. I reckon it was dolphins rounding up a ball of
fish. Then they vanished. Diversion over I decided to motor on as
economically as I could and if any wind appeared , use it. I had started
Sunday some 65 miles from Bilbao and by Sunday evening this was down to
35miles and I could see the coastal mountains of Spain, which is about right
since they are 200 to 500 metres high. During this time the dolphins came
back only they were swimming all round and under the boat, you could look
over the side and see 5 or 6 right below you, they played about for a while,
one showing off his belly by leaping out of the water on his side, then they
shot off just as quickly. It was now nearly dark and I was still motoring
on, and the fuel gauge read a smidgen over halfful still? When I got to 17.5
miles from my target things started to fail as I had been running the engine
below charging speed. I speeded the engine up, my confidence growing, to
charge the batteries, at the harbour entrance at 0400 I was doing nearly
4kts and new I was going to make it. The marina is some 5 miles up the river
so there was at least an hour to go, it turned out to be longer because I
had to get out of the Portsmouth-Bilbao ferry finally getting here at 0624
straight to the fuelling berth, where I managed to get my card blocked by
the bank and had to pay cash for the 71 litres of fuel I had used. I then
booked myself in for a week, got my card unblocked and settled down in the
26 degree temp to re-supply myself. So far I have no electricity and no
internet, the electricity can be fixed when the shops open at 1700 but there
won't be any internet, one battery is already complaining, so I had better
shut up shop for now.
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