We made it to Gibraltar
Rubicon
Sun 31 May 2015 11:16
We had a good time sailing to Plymouth from Southampton on our own May 16-17 - despite that the kids and I got sea sick - and started puking just at the exit from the solent waters near Southampton called the “Needles”. We anchored in Tor bay for the night, had a good supper and then carried on to Plymouth. Plymouth was very interesting, Kids were fascinated by the Aquarium. I was the best one I have ever visited. Also we strolled along the cliffs overlooking the harbour and went up one of the old lighthouses that was on the Eddystone reef, 22 km off of Plymouth. There is a massive Lido there as well, but it was too cold and it hadn't opened yet, to the disappointment of the kids. All they want to do is swim.
We left Plymouth in the morning of 19/5 in blustery conditions and crossed the English Channel - to get a good chance at decent winds for the Bay of Biscay we did accept that the crossing would be a little bumpy with fairly high winds. We made very good progress. Our 24 hour runs in nautical miles during our trip were 184, 189, 197, 176, 183, 158 arriving in Gibraltar almost exactly 6 days later. This is considered a very quick passage. The conditions were quite varied, with short periods of no wind - and us using the engine - to a maximum of about 35 knots of sustained wind. We did get some waves in the Channel - but mainly along the coast of Portugal. Seeing waves behind you and breaking is not something I want to see too often. From Vlad...."I can report that the boat can surf the waves, - autopilot doesn’t do well in these conditions - but hand steering can be quite exhilarating - max boat speed I got it up to during this was 12.4 knots."
Thankfully John Eustace was with us for the trip. John and Vlad did most of the watches at night. I did early morning relief, some watches in the day, the food and the kids!
see:
Rubicon IV on youtube if you want a small taste of crossing the channel. We will post more videos as the days go by. They are taken with a GoPro camera.
The kids having gotten their sea legs; were back to their normal selves quite happily reading, playing with their pads and occasionally bickering. - The boat was much quieter when they were puking and sleeping. I gave them sea sickness pills when necessary, and that worked well. Catherine less sensitive to it all, but Pavel a trouper and didn't complain. Overall, the kids coped beyond my expectations. It wasn't bad at all being on the boat for 6 days straight which was both a surprise and a relief to me..
The boat handled everything thrown at it - very happy in high winds. No problems except a smashing wave did blow off 2 teak slats from the "dolphin seats” forward. Also obviously in the most inopportune moment along the coast of Portugal, in the big waves, a floating loose line from a lobster pot did wrap itself around the keel and then around the rudder. We did manage to cut it and then unravel it from the understructure with a few tacks and also heaving to. - Thankfully as diving under the boat in these conditions was totally impossible. The line must have been floating for a while, since we were off soundings in at least 1500m of depth.
We saw numerous dolphins, both common and bottlenose, but no whales. Occasional sea birds. An exciting start to our summer!