Wednesday 28th July
Another cool and cloudy start to the day. The boat rocked us about a bit due to the
fairly strong wind and choppy sea.
We were due to leave at five so went back to our original anchorage in
order to get provisions from the shop on Culatra for the journey. Before we left we heard the great news
on the radio that the region of Catalonia had voted to ban
bullfighting from January 2012.
Hopefully, in the not too distant future all such cruel practices will be
banned across
Spain. After lunch, which is usually a
variation of bread, cheese, ham, tuna, salad and crisps - washed down with beer
and wine of course, we got Stardust ready for the passage to
Cadiz. It seemed odd to dig out warm clothes in
the baking hot sun but nights can get quite chilly at sea. I steered us out through the channel
marker buoys at 5pm and out into the
open sea. The previous day’s
storm at sea had left a huge swell in the water which caused the boat to pitch
and toss from stern to bow but it wasn’t too bad at first. Dolphins appeared and entertained
us by leaping alongside the bow for 10 minutes or so once we were out in the
ocean and it felt good to feel the cooling sea breeze after the heat of the
day. There wasn’t enough wind to
put sails up, although we had the genoa out for a short while before having to
take it down when the wind dropped further. We made good speed (5knots) with the
engine and Simon (our autohelm) did the steering for us. After about an hour the rocking
increased and we both began to feel slightly queasy and put off plans to have
dinner watching the sunset. Paul went for a sleep in the cabin while I did my
8-12 watch. Thankfully the sickness passed but it seemed long because reading
brought it back and it was too choppy to hold a book steady anyway so I watched
the sunset at 9 30 and the moon rise at 11 30 and watched out for fishing boats
and buoys until Paul relieved me at midnight.
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