Underway on lively passage towards Las Palmas, Gran Canaria 28:05N 15:08W

Ticketeeboo
Sue & Alan
Sat 2 Nov 2013 11:58
Slipped-lines at Gran Tarajal late morning yesterday and made our way along Fuertenventura SW coast, mostly sailing. Indeed, sampled one of the aptly named 'acceleration zones' for our first time. Interestingly, departing Gran Tarajal we sailed gently broad reaching NE F4 for just over an hour and half, then the wind died completely and it was on with the donk for almost an hour and what little wind we had, S F2 was on the nose. Then we saw our NE'ly coming back and decided to run on just our poled-out genoa. As a precaution we put 2 reefs in and as the wind strength increased we went down to a third reef. Good job too because we were now seeing 30kn T and made our destination for the night, dropping hook of a lovely sandy beach couple mile E of Puerto de Morro Jabble (sounds like a Star Wars character!). The forecast 'Atlantic swell' kicked-in (as we expected) just after 3am. We had already decided, if this happened we would pick our hook up and depart. As it happened we accepted the increasing swell until for next 2 hours then slung our hook towards Las Palmas. 15NM to go so expecting to be on hook circa 2'ish. Our sail this morning has been 'very lively' and quite energetic! We've had a big sea, at least 3, possibly 4m at times, together with F5, sometimes F6 beam reaching seeing up to 9kn with 2 reefs in mainsl + jib. We still have the beastly beam sea although the wind is only just touching F6 for time being, which is still giving us 7kn +/- a little. My Lover is curled-up in the saloon and hasn't offered to do any cooking for time being. I think this will wait until we're on hook and not moving round like a badly loaded spin-dryer! Ticketeeboo's sailing brilliantly, it's just our inability to be able to move round freely or even take a piss without needing to hold on tight! Sue's last words before nodding-off were "....... and we're doing this for fun!" I agree, it's marvelously exciting and much better than driving a car on the motorway!!!! I will, nevertheless, leave trying to have a shower until after we're on hook and the yacht's not juggling us about!
-----
Ticketeeboo MMSI 235071989 Callsign 2CED3
At 02/11/2013 11:58 (utc) our position was 28°05.94'N 015°12.38'W
http://blog.mailasail.com/ticketeeboo

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com