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Date: 21 Jul 2010 15:39:54
Title: Stormy Weather
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32:26.81N 28:20.41E

 

Friday 9th July

 

Spent the day getting sorted for the long sail to Malta.

 

Weather forecast showed head winds all the way but little we can do about that but just get on with things!

 

Sarah and I had dinner out in the evening with Ellen and Haakon from Ko Ko and we hope that we might meet up with them later in the year when we arrive in the Caribbean as they are crossing the Atlantic just a few weeks before us in November.

 

Saturday – Tuesday 10th – 13th July

 

Got our visas stamped by Border Control and set off from the pontoon at 08.00 am heading for Valetta in Malta, although we had to stop at the fuel dock first!

 

Very little wind and so we opted to motor out to the 12 mile point (Israeli rules) before setting sail properly and of course the weather forecast was correct and the wind was bang on the nose. We then endured a long slow sail with  various amounts of wind, but always a big swell which kept taking all our way off and was quite unpleasant. Scott Free had opted to sail right from the start and they did very well throughout and it was sort of reassuring to see them in the distance and on our AIS. The wind got up after dark and we flew along albeit still in the ‘wrong’ direction and gradually the shipping traffic around us increased. Radio traffic was dominated by the Israeli navy and it did occur to us that there was something going on today and this suspicion was heightened when we came across the ship ‘Rainbow Warrior’ acting rather curiously at midnight.

 

Sunday was a very frustrating day with very light wind, still remorselessly from the west and progress was slow. We did try our hand at fishing at 08.00 am and by 9.00 am had landed a perfect 8kg tuna. One and half hours later the steaks were in the fridge and everything tidied away. We are beginning to get the hang of this now!

 

We had our daily 7.00 pm radio net with Scott Free, who we could no longer see even on the AIS for some reason and they turned out to be just behind us, but over the immediate horizon. The regular radio net is actually them helping Sarah use our SSB radio but there is a fault somewhere and this is not working properly, but since we are still close enough to use VHF it does not matter just yet.

 

Monday was little better in terms of wind direction and we chose to put in our first tack to head away from the Egyptian coast and head more for Turkey! Not sure if this was not all a bit academic but it seemed a good idea. In the evening Scott Free gave us their position which showed that they had simply stayed on the same tack all day and were now some miles to the south of us but not too far away. So in the evening we tacked back again and headed south west again which then coincided with a steady increase in the wind strength. This got up all night and although we fairly few through the darkness (no moon at all so far, but loads of shooting stars) the sea built up as well making it a very nasty ride indeed. Added to the fun was the fact that in the middle of the night the furlex on the forestay jammed with a riding turn and so we were stuck with the twins set as a yankee and no way of furling them up, or even tacking ( the inner forestay precludes that option) and so at dawn I had to dismantle the unit and start again.  This meant sitting on the bows with my legs astride the forestay and my feet dangling over the sides to take the furlex apart, but in the big seas this meant a real roller coaster ride for me as the bows reared high in the sky over one big wave and then plunged down and through the next wave – and I do not do roller coasters!! As luck would have it, I did not get submerged during this operation and all was well.

 

Tuesday dawned and we were in 25 knots of wind and big seas which made sleep hard to come by. One huge wave hit us beam on and swamped the entire deck and sadly found the slightly open hatch above Sarah who was desperate for both sleep and fresh air, delivering a huge amount of water on to the bed, Sarah and the sofa-thing, plus walls etc! We made good speed all day and eventually the seas began to die down but the new complication was tons of shipping heading both to and from the Suez Canal. We spent hours dodging them before finding that the wind direction had now got even worse and was driving us further south still. We plan to tack this evening and head back out northwards and will be interested to hear where Scott Free are.

 

The plan of doing this in 8 days has gone out of the window for sure and we could be out here for 10 or more days easily at this rate.

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