Departure Cascias

Itchycoo
Sun 12 Aug 2018 09:13
With the deck quoits put away for later in the cruise, an early start for the crew was called so as to maximise daylight hour cruising which meant farewell to Portugal at 07:30. The overnight winds were at their worst during dinner and every time the tablecloth flapped we patted ourselves on the back for being wise enough not to be out in that. We are currently heading 200 degrees (not 220 as mentioned yesterday - typo) at 6-7 knots in 18 knot winds from the NW in position 38:32.0N 009:30.0W

As mentioned yesterday, the destination is Lanzarote, one of a handful of Canary Islands, this one named after the winner of the 1974 Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham - we didn't know the Spanish were so into horse racing.

Yesterdays maintenance had a couple of highlights. I'm not sure whether we enjoyed more seeing Kevin (our 67 year old athlete) up the mast in the bosun's chair fixing a light or Roger driving the boat round in circles trying the recalibrate the compass used to give our heading to AIS - sadly unsuccessfully - more information needed from Raymarine on how to fix it. Luckily, it doesn't affect how we sail (which is also mainly round in circles).

The crew decided to delay reprovisioning until late in the day yesterday (supermarkets are open until midnight but closed during the day for siesta) and thought the best plan was to do it after an early dinner (to be followed by an early night). All, however, went astray as the dinner was very slow to arrive and the restaurant apologised by giving us more wine than we wanted (free) and complimentary glasses of port - just what you need before a trip to the shops - you should try it at home. The net result was that we were loading shopping onto the boat at 1.00 a.m!

The winds were non existent earlier so we found ourselves motoring the first few miles and were entertained when Roger increased the engine revolutions by 200 rpm and reduced our time of expected arrival at our first waypoint by a day! I guess that just illustrates how far we are going.

We are just about to lose sight of land and will not see it again for five days - quite a thought too.

Enjoy Sunday and best wishes from the 'Its all too beautiful' cruise.




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