Diary update

Watermusic
Thu 22 Nov 2012 11:25
33.41.35N; 010.14.48W
Night watches started on Tuesday night – Grace and Graham paired together, and Stephen and Tim.  After a quick spag bol – G&G did 8pm – 12 midnight – and S& T the midnight till 4am , then G& G took over again at 4am till 8am.  Weather calm but sea lumpy and confused, and made quite slow progress with a slight current against us.  The rain started around 11pm – and it was much colder than any of us were expecting.  Stephen and Tim were ‘carpeted’ by dolphins on their watch and Graham saw them too (smaller ones than the ones we saw in the Gulf of Corinth and Preveza).  Graham says he is having a lovely time and the weather is getting better (slowly) but Graham briefly managed to bare his chest for a brief moment this morning to start his tan!
Using the AIS (Automated Identification System) is fun all shipping is obliged to carry it (but not obliged to have it on, though so far they all have).  We have a receiver but not a transponder, so we can see them but they may not have spotted us.  When a ship comes into range a grey boat appears on the GPS and you can click on it and see who they are, how big they are, how far away they are, what their destination is, how fast they are travelling and how soon you could crash into them!  We have had a fair amount of shipping and some yachts around the Straits of Gibraltar, and a few more making their way into Casablanca.  The nights seem quite long – the sun goes down just after 6pm and it isn’t light until 8am, last night we swopped the watches so Grace and Graham did the midnight to 4am shift.  Boat very rolly and the waves are all on our starboard quarter, but thankfully not huge – yet!  The most exciting thing that happened yesterday evening was Tim catching a fish!  Everyone who has been sailing with us will know that this doesn’t often happen on Water Music so there was huge excitement – it was a smallish tuna and we will eat it for lunch today!  There was a lovely sunrise this morning and we have put up the small spinnaker which is enabling us to sail much deeper downwind.  We have 431 miles to go to Gran Canaria which according to the GPS we will reach in 74 hours time!