Dolphin drag
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Wed 4 Nov 2009 20:44
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Up bright and early today again and made a plan to
plug our way along the South West coast of Fuertaventura and see if we would
anchor overnight just for the evening or sail straight on through the night to
Gran Canaria. As it is we are anchored in position 28:04.19N 014:29.94W at
Puerto de la Luz SW Fuertaventura in a pleasant enough anchorage under the loom
of the lighthouse on Puenta Jandia.
We sailed off the anchor abour 10am and got the
spinnaker up rapidly in very light NE gradient winds which built nicely until
mid day when they were overhauled by a sea breeze which forced us to drop
the spinaker and get the genoa out on port tack with the light sea
breeze now on our beam we were hitting speeds of up to 8.5knots. Just about
to relax for a moment I looked at the sea ahead and saw lot of white caps
blowing off the shore. We got the genny in and the jib out on starboard tack
just in time to be hit by 20 - 25 knots which dipped the rail in the water and
powered up to 10.5 knots but holding a steady 10 knots - she felt great on
the helm as Craig and I shared her. The dolphins came to join at 10
knots for a drag race - but instead of incredulity at how little effort
they had to put in to keep up with our bow wave, today they were beating their
tail fins pretty vigourously along side - they didn't stay for too
long - lazy buggers! W are due to leave the anchorage at 0400 for a short 50
mile sail over to Gran Canaria.
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