34 16.64N, 08 00.02W
Libeccio
Mon 6 Oct 2014 18:47
Our first night out of Gib was interesting to say the least. As the saying goes about many things in life, it was hours of calm punctuated by minutes of excitement (or something like that). After clearing the straight and getting a good distance down the coast of Morocco, we noticed that the number of other boats (mostly tankers) dropped dramatically and so thought we were in for a relaxing evening. With the winds still light we were motoring along and the seas were generally flattish (waves of 1 - 2m) but pretty confused and so it was a bumpy ride.
As Mike and Andy had not done night watches before, Jane and I sandwiched them with Andy taking the 19:00 - 22:00; Jane the 22:00 - 01:00; Mike 01:00- 04:00 and then me on 04:00 - 07:00.. the idea being that we would start our shift a bit earlier and run a little later. So it was in one of these overlap periods around 02:30 that Jane, Mike and I were conferring on the best way to wind our way through a group of ships: one from the south blocking any effort of ours to go West, while two other coming from the North that were overtaking us and limiting our moves to go East. In any event, we managed to get through and no boats were damaged in the process!
The winds had picked up through the evening and so we (fully) raised both the Main and the Genoa and have sailed all through the day and if the weather reports are correct will continue to sail through the night. It has been interesting to compare the waves as we have moved further away from the land — although the waves have gotten bigger.. at times 3-4m, they have also been more spread out which allowed Libeccio to sail up on side and down the other with not as much “banging” as normal. Our top speed today was around 7.5 knots although our average was about 5 knots.
I have made amends for my baking disaster of yesterday— and remembered to put the mixing thingy in the bottom of the bowl when putting the ingredients in. As an effort to stay awake, i started up the bread machine at 05:30 so it would be finished by 09:30. For you bread making machine experts who are also math majors, you will quickly deduce that I was making french bread (it has the longest bake time for this machine). Given the “success” of yesterday’s batch, I did not have a lot of volunteers to sample this morning’s output, but, after showing that it actually did look like bread, there were takers all around.
Speaking of food, Jane treated us with her pork chops and rice including bits such as peppers together with a green salad and fresh avocado— no hardtops here to say the least!!
Just as we were about to sit down to dinner, we here a “thud” on the coach roof and noticed a new pile of rope. As it turned out, our topping lift had frayed all the way through at the mast head. The topping lift holds up the boom when it is not being held up by the sail. It is not really in use when sailing but pretty important when you are not. I don’t have a spare halyard that can be used so we will need to improvise and make use of the halyard for the main sail when we drop the sail completely. The weather forecast for the next couple days is pretty benign and so we have reefed the main sail to its second reef point. This is one more reef than the weather forecast calls for, but, better safe than sorry.
In any event, we are all reefed up, happy tummies and been treated to a beautiful sunset. Time for the silly shifts to start!
Apologies for the lack of photos, but, I am going to try a bit later to get some uploaded using a different method.
Take care,