Safely Through the Straights 35:47.72N 06:07.72W
The Snark on The ARC
Ben Little
Thu 12 Nov 2009 00:04
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Hi Folks,
it is approaching 1 am on our first night at sea as
we sail from Gibraltar to Las Palmas in the Canaries. It is good to have
both Dugald and Chris aboard as it significantly reduces the length of night
watches one has to stay awake through. I am just finishing my 3 hour stint
and as tradition seems to dictate this is the time that I sit down in front of
the PC and enter the log, check the weather for tomorrow and put in a quick blog
entry.
With the guys arriving around 2 hours late today
(not their fault late flights) we did not get away till between 4 and 5pm.
Which only gave us a couple of hours of daylight to get through the
straights. Not nearly enough time as was obvious from the moment we
entered the straights. While the weather was good we had missed the best
window and had 2 knots of current and around 10-15 Knots of headwind to slow our
progress, it was painful progress and we would not have made it under sail at
all. We put up the sails around 9 PM with the worst of the current over
and began to head south, at which point I found myself alone on deck as the
others collapsed on their beds for some rest before their watches. I have
spend a very nerve wracking few hours dodging the Ships I tried to cross the
traffic separation scheme in pitch darkness, No near misses or close calls but
the boats do seem to come out of nowhere and it is easy to lose them against the
lights from the African coastline. I also kept seeing flashing lights
seemingly on the horizon, I have just now reasoned that they are fishing pots or
nets which are happily lit in this part of the world with flashing lights.
Just had to pause then as I saw yet another set of
lights but I think we are safely leaving them to port, there really does seem to
be a huge amount of shipping around tonight, I hope this does not persist for
the whole trip as it is really quite stressful.
time to wake Dugald now so he can take over, I'll
probably send this through in the morning bye which time I hope we are a lot
further along out route, The wind is slackening off so maybe it is a forlorn
hope,
Bye for now
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