Sunday 21st September, not to be forgotten
Kirofbrixham
Tue 23 Sep 2008 11:40
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Hi, this is Lynn writing for a change. By the way,
if you think we arrived here via the middle of Africa, all might be explained.
What was your Sunday like?
We left Almerimar as planned ay 9.30am, heading for
Estepona. It would be quite a long passage, 115 miles, so we knew we were in for
at least 20 hours and an overnighter. It was very calm when we left, with no
wind and continued like that well into the afternoon. However, Nature put on the
first Act of what was to be a spectacular show. We saw flying fish; a swordfish
jumping several times right out of the water and dolphins on five separate
occasions, two of which had them leaping around the boat.As afternoon ran into
evening, it was time for the second Act. We spotted a large patch of rain dead
ahead on the radar which turned out to be very heavy with squally winds. I got
farly wet trying to shelter under the sprayhood and Kir well soaked. The only
one dry was Ian who had discovered lots of important tasks at the chart table!
As we came out of the rain into the sun and looked back, we could see
two beautiful rainbows arching across the sea.
As night fell, Act 3 commenced. We had a clear
sky overhead, but there were cloud masses to the right of us over the Sierra
Nevada mountains and behind and to the left of us, albeit quite a way away. For
the next few hours, both these cloud masses were lit with incredible flashes of
lightening one after the other-vivid electric storms. We felt as if we were
running through a war zone. At one point,
the electric instruments went crazy, spinning round very fast and this is
probably why there was the weird reading of us in Africa.
Unfortunately, as the night wore on, the wind swung
round to right on the nose and the seas started to build. Eventually, with
Kir slapping hard into bigger and bigger waves, we, like the Duke of
Wellington, decided it was time for a strategic retreat and turned for the
nearest haven-Fuengirola. This was 7 miles back down the coast when we were only
22 miles from Estepona, very frustrating. We were both pretty tired by then
and it was not easy finding our way into an unknown marina. Thank goodness for
the radar and chartplotter which led us in when we could`nt distinguish one set
of lights from another. We eventually got to bed ar 2.45am,after Ian, on an
adrenaline high, insisted on opening a bottle of wine at 2.30 in the
morning!
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