Day 3 Spain to Cork

Sattwa
Mon 18 May 2015 08:06

Picked up the wind yesterday afternoon-we have been making good progress overnight with gale force winds gusting to 38 knots. The top batten in our mainsail has taken flight (towards France) and hence the deeply reefed main is flapping quite a bit. We’ve  all managed to grab some sleep between watches. My bunk forward was taking quite a pounding.I managed to wedge myself obliquely between cushions and guitar  case and apart from the odd momentary levitation managed to get some sleep. The bilge pump was very active and when investigated it was not pumping- we cleaned the strainer to no avail and ended up mopping up most of it with old cloths and sponges. It seems that it is old diesel that we think was there froma previous episode with faulty seal on diesel tank. In any case its not getting worse.We have been watching thye barometer  taking a dive over the last few hoursIt dropped 8 points to 1013 from 1021. It has now risen to 1014 so hopefully things will quieten down a bit. We’re now 149 miles from Cork so hopefully should get in sometime around midday Tuesday. All the best for now.