Going To Spain ? 43 22.73N 03 04.87W
Lera(hen3ry)
Malcolm Cann
Mon 30 Jul 2007 15:09
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.