I am typing this blog onboard a very quiet Ceilidh this morning as the crew and boat endured another busy and bouncy night at sea and are now catching up on their sleep.

 

Our final day in Ibiza was spent as follows:

 

Collect the Mainsail and Genoa from our Swedish sailmaker ( Talle del Viento) Marie Louise Horken as she had no transport that day. We took a taxi out to her loft which was a very sizeable and impressive sail loft unit in an industrial park. It then took Richard, Andy and myself around 4 hours to re-assemble the battens and bend on the sail. We then hoisted Zoe aloft to re-thread the starboard lazyjack lines which had been damaged during the original incident at sea. The technical aspect of the 5 battens was a bit of an eye opener as there are locking systems at both ends of the batten comprising of plastic plates bolted through the sails and locking grub screws so nothing can work loose when the sail is in use. Once we were ready to sail we hoisted the main and tested each reef within the main harbour breakwater so that we were happy with the function.

 

We departed Ibiza at 17:00 and for the first time since we left Kos we had a following wind allowing us to sail with a true wind angle of 150 degrees. We set off through the channel between Ibiza and Formentera with a F4 wind increasing to a F5/6 which had Ceilidh blasting out of the blocks at 8-9knots! As always with a following wind which is rising there is a time when the boat becomes overpowered with too much sail and a tendency to broach. The sea condition were remarkably flat for the wind strength as this was a fairly local increase and there was no long fetch to build up the swell. Ceilidh reeled off many of her best moves in this period dancing between the waves with great energy and the autohelm doing an absolutely brilliant job of keeping her on track. We reefed around 02:00hrs this morning and then soon added a second as the wind gusted to 26knots. Sometime during the night the log hit an all time high of 16.1knots, so put that in your pipe Mr G!

 

AS always we had our bit of drama when the holy grail of instruments our B  & G cockpit display blacked out. This required all instruments to be switched off and in very challenging conditions helming we managed to have the main gybe a couple of times with the preventer then holding the sail aback. We managed to extricate ourselves from this potentially damaging situation and the mainsail preventer has had a very good test!

 

At 10:00 local time this morning Ceilidh had completed a  distance run of 136NM putting her on track for around 190NM over 24hrs. We are making a course of 240M towards our first waypoint off the gulf of Almeria. However the wind is due to turn Westerly within the next 18hours which will slow our progress somewhat although we should complete the short 400NM hop to Gibraltar by Sunday.

 

Ibiza was remarkably quiet in off season mode with the town remarkably untouched by mass tourism. We had a couple of superb meals at Cafe Sidney which was located at the Botafoch Marina and we we always had great service here. There were a remarkably high number of Pershing 50 power boats berthed at this marina which cost around 750K if you like to go fast and burn diesel!

 

Some of the other main tasks completed in port were:

 

Both electric winch controls replaced ( it took a while for yours truly to re acquaint myself with crimping cable connectors in a confined space but the job was done eventually)

Non slip tape applied to forward deck, hatches and saloon stairs.

Port aft cabin door catch repaired

Re-set the simrad GB 40 chartplotter so that we now have our instrument bar displayed at last!

Changed the gas cylinder

Stores shopping

 

As always with boats we are working through endless lists. We currently have the ARC safety list to work through and have started on a Hanse and vendor list for Las Palmas. This is a very useful part of the ARC set up where you can book appointments and pre-order equipment to be replaced or repaired ensuring the boat will be in fine fettle for departure.

 

Dave Sturrock