One potato, two potato

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Sun 12 Dec 2010 11:38

26:40.4N 17:40.3W

 

Fri 10th & Sat 11th Dec

 

Friday was the day Sarah’s plans all came together with the final big shop at the veg market. Joyce and Robert F went with her to help and reappeared several hours later in a taxi laden with fruit and veg. A lot of comment was passed about the huge volume of potatoes that had been purchased and certainly when it was all laid out on the pontoon, it did seem that she might have slightly over catered on the spuds. In the end we gave some away to S-F and a French family who are planning to leave in a day or so as well.

 

All the veg was washed, dried and carefully packed away on board hopefully in a way that will make it last better and be accessible as we go along. Sarah finally began to look a whole lot more relaxed as we came to the end of the day and everything was deemed to be ready for our departure in the morning and to round things off nicely, the wind swung round to the north as predicted. We had a light supper (baked potatoes) and an early night.

 

Saturday dawned bright and sunny and at 8.00am we helped S-F untie their lines and set off, then we slipped our own lines and headed out of the marina. Sadly we had to head north first, just a few miles to another small harbour to take on fuel, so it was around 9.30am that we finally set off on a south westerly heading for the Cape Verde Islands.

 

Glorious sunshine but almost no wind and it was coming from the south west! We ended up motoring and motor sailing for most of the day and night with just a few hours of sailing properly whenever the wind picked up a little.

 

Sarah spotted and photographed two short finned pilot whales who were cruising along across our track. To her surprise they stopped and let us sail through before resuming their trip! In the early evening we saw quite a bit  of lightning over the Canary Islands and the distant African coast and had our own little rain clouds for a while. The night sky was beautiful and largely clear (Sarah would beg to differ:  her midnight watch had hardly any moon or starlight and endless thunder clouds but she did see a couple of dolphins) and shooting stars were very much the main features of interest. There were a few ships around and a couple of large yachts (148ft and 112ft) that crossed our track but otherwise a pretty empty sea. Scott-Free are just a few miles behind us at present and we keep in touch by radio at least once a day.