Lat: 37:11.8. N : Long: 001:10.7 E. - Monday, 28th July, in the Mediterranean, en route to Didim, Turkey.

Sulana's Voyage
Alan and Sue Brook
Mon 28 Jul 2014 16:49

Lat: 37:11.8. N : Long: 001:10.7 E.

Monday, 28th July, in the Mediterranean, en route to Didim, Turkey.
 
With a new washer-drier safely installed (Hooray!), the Apes seen, the Siege and WW11 tunnels visited and the Rock well and truly toured, "Sulana" departed Gibraltar on the afternoon of July 26th. at 17:00 (UTC + 02:00) having first topped up with cheap diesel fuel for the long motor trip ahead in a flat sea..
 
There is no forecast of any wind to speak of for quite a while ahead and then what does come might well be too strong and on the nose! So we are destined to make a long motor trip of this, to try to get ahead of any bad weather changes. Probably (almost certainly) we will need to refuel in Sardinia, maybe Sicily, or Malta, but these last two are probably too far).
 
So the last day and a half has been spent under engine, reading and looking out for any Cetaceans, on behalf of our new French friend from Sao Miguel, Dr. Alexandre Gannier, of GREC. I had, obviously clearly misguidedly, always thought the Med was a fairly barren sea, vastly over-fished, but, judging by the number of very healthy looking dolphins we have seen so far, I must be wrong. They are clearly feeding well enough on fish and squid, or whatever.
 
Within 24 hours and, especially just after passing close to that weirdest looking of places, the Island of Alboran, we found ourselves logging pod after pod of dolphins of virtually every type! We have already seen two small families of 'Grampus', better-known to Science as Risso's Dolphin, as well as varying size groups of Bottlenose, Common, Striped and Rough-toothed dolphins as well. At least that is what Alan 'thinks' they are. Apart from the Grampus, which is quite easy, once seen, the others are all somewhat difficult to get exact identification correct each time. Our information is all being logged and will be forwarded on to GREC when we arrive in Turkey for them to use.
 
Now we just need to order up and fit a new hot water calorifier, to exchange with our old one, which we now know to be the cause of the engine coolant leak, Having shut off the hot water flow from the engine to the calorifier before we left Gib, we have been 'pleased' to find that no more coolant has leaked out. Meaning it must have gone through the calorifier system somewhere. Now, how do we get a new calorifier - the size of a medium-sized dog, into Turkey?!
 
That's all for now. Back to Dolphin Watch.
 
Alan, Nelius and Will.