Friday 24th June
Whitesatin
Fri 24 Jun 2016 06:45
On the whole things are going very well.
We have had the Parasailor (a spinnaker with a 'letter box' whole in the middle of it, which is supposed to spill the wind and make the boat roll less)up since we entered the Bay of Biscay at lunchtime yesterday.The last 24 hours have seen us mostly sailing rather than motoring.
The big excitement (apart from the huddle around the long wave radio to listen to the shipping forecast) was that between 01:00 and 05:00 this morning, we were joined on our journey by a family of dolphins. The just played around the boat for hours, calling to each other - we really enjoyed their company.
Jane and I are both now on our second Scopoderm seasick patch, but they seem to be doing their job well and we are even comfortable moving around down below; the men seem to have cast iron stomachs. We are now safely over the notorious Biscay shelf, an underwater cliff which cases the big waves.
We had one scarey moment in the middle of the night. David A and I were on watch and I came downstairs to put the kettle on, trying to do so without putting on any lights as I didn't want to disturb the others. We could smell burning very strongly, Alan leapt out of bed and we discovered the lid of the kettle in the gas hob ring. Safety has to come before sleep so next time I will not try to be too clever.
Sleeping is tough. Apparently you get into the watch patterns when on a long trip; I don't think our body clocks know what is happening with one broken night, then a normal night's sleep in L'Aber Wrac'h then back to the watch pattern last night. However, there are enough of us around during the day so there is quite lot of cat-napping going on.
265 miles to go to the waypoint on the corner of Spain, so we will probably arrive in the middle of the night on Saturday.
We are anxiously awaiting news of the Referendum - will there be extra landing forms for us to fill in when we reach Spain or not?
On this boat there were 4 votes for Remain and 1 vote to Leave.
A bientot.
Vicki xx