On passage again

Lochmarin
Tue 21 Aug 2012 18:09
41:17.17N 09:00.80W

Lovely to be off again! We've had some super day sails, but it feels different: knowing we're not going to be holed up somewhere at nightfall, that we'll be back in the 3hrs on, 3hrs off pattern; feeling the boat move in the swell, not the choppy waves of inshore, but the gentle roll of the ocean swell coming past us and seeing other sea birds, not just gulls. I've been trying to identify some that we've been seeing, and I'm pretty sure they're Cory's Sheerwaters. As before, we don't seem to do much whilst we're traveling - mind you, even out in 80m depth, 5 miles off shore, the little flags marking the pot buoys are so plentiful it looks like a slalom skin course rather than the open sea! We keep look out, identify places as they pass by on the shore, listen to the ships and coast guards calling each other on the radio, check the forecast, make some food... and that's about it really. Time passes really quickly.

The dolphins came to join us again this morning, I broke my resolve and tried to get a photo of them (will post when we're not relying on radio to send these updates), however, as before, when ever I tried to catch them jumping out all I managed to take is the splash of them re-entering. I will post one of those pictures ... "Here is a picture of where a dolphin was". Still, I tried, and, as always, it was lovely to have them come visit.

We set off this morning in light winds from the West, enough to let us make some progress South, but finally the wind has veered North now, although still light we are m,aking good progress Southwards. The hills of Galicia have tumbled down into the sea as we've sailed along the Portuguese coast, the towns looking like scree at their feet. It's so flat now that when a land mark on the coast comes up, a block of flats, a wind turbine, it looks as if they are in the middle of the sea ahead of you, until you come abeam of them.

We lunched on the squid. I chopped off his head, pulled out his backbone - a sort of cartilage thing, removed all squidgy bits from inside, sliced him into rings and fried those and his tentacles in olive oil, sea salt and lemon juice. We had him with fresh bread - squid sandwich! He was rather good, actually!

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