30:08.963N 15:57.797W                                        28th October 2014

Madeira to the Salvage Islands -------- Ilhas Selvagens

Big liner leaving Funchal Spectra in foreground                                            Last night in Funchal doing superman impressions

  The three wise monkeys take a well earned break from the shopping, can you spot the two silver backs?

Here we are happily bobbing along on the second afternoon of our trip to Tenerife. Having picked up and safely stowed our new crew, Tommy and Sue, we departed Funchal at 0800 and motored out of the marina past Discoverer, a 67 foot UK military yacht which had come in the night before. As no marina staff could be found when they arrived we had done the decent thing and lent them our keys to the shower block. 9 very grateful and certainly cleaner looking squaddies  came on deck to wave us off as we raised sails and headed out. Wind at last, we had a steady 12-15 Knots on our beam all morning and Spectra lifted her skirts like the dignified lady she is and positively skipped along at 6-7 knots for over 8 hours. We passed the Deserted Islands (Ilhas Desertas) to port about 10 miles off and several of the huge catamarans the locals use as trip boats who were busily looking for dolphins as we headed south once again.   They had no chance with the dolphin spotting we didn’t see any all day.

The crew relax on day one.2

Norma paints another masterpiece

            Nothing much happened as we settled into our routines, the steering gear was behaving itself and enjoying life with its new pump humming away and the fishing gear was out tempting the big one that I just know is out there somewhere. We drew lots for the shift pattern 2 on 6 off as that had worked really well on the way over and Sue prepared a feast for the first night at sea, Chorizo Chicken mmmmm! At 1330 Norma who was sunbathing on deck let out a shout as with a bang the spinnaker halyard broke and dumped 1,436 square feet of nylon into the sea. Everyone leapt into action and we managed to pull it all back on deck before it wrapped itself around the rudder or did intself any irreparable damage. On inspection the line had frayed at the point it comes through the mast and so my splicing skills remain irreproachable. 2 hours and various attempts later we had managed to untangle the chute from its snuffer and re-launched the spinnaker on a spare halyard.

A right soggy mess to sort out                                                                          The culprit

            As the sun dropped the wind went with it and so it was a motor sail through the night. The only memorable point of the night shift was when on my handover to Peter he made the coffee and put orange juice in mine instead of milk, definitely a taste sensation at 2 O’clock in the morning. The next morning our first group of dolphins gave us a visit. The cry of “Dolphins” caused Tommy and Sue to jump out of bed and come scurrying on deck, Sue to see the dolphins, and Tommy to see where Sue was going so early. There were about 12 of them jumping about grinning in that dolphin kind of way (I still think they are up to something) and they were a new breed to add to our list, quite small and spotted, maybe they were teenagers. What a great way to start a day especially as this spectacle was shortly followed by the call “Land ho”, we are traditionalists aboard Spectra, as the Salvage Islands came up over the horizon. We have now been sailing very slowly all morning and are now directly in-between the two main Salvage islands, having sighted a big whale venting as we approached.

The Salvage Islands 100 miles from anywhere and one very lonely inhabitant

            That’s it for this one, we expect to arrive in Tenerife tomorrow afternoon/early evening all being well, at which point I will send this in and update on the last night and day.