39:05.3N 01:26.9E

Left Marina Greenwich at 6.00am heading for a bay on the North coast of Ibiza, with a gentle breeze blowing from the East and a very slight swell still left over from the day before.

As we started heading away from mainland Spain the wind picked a bit and before long we had a near perfect 12 - 15 knots of wind allowing us to sail on a very fine reach to our waypoint off the North Western tip of Ibiza. The sea was pretty flat and we skipped along at a respectable 7+ knots pretty much all the way. Saw quite a few yachts at sea for the first time since we finished the rally, although mostly headed the other way from us. We did have a couple heading our way, but we soon left them far behind as we cruised along through a clear blue sea in brilliant sunshine. Took the opportunity to drag our plastic squid for another 70 miles to no effect of course. Hope to get something rather more successful in Palma tomorrow.

After around 8 hours we found ourselves on a collision course with a container ship which was ploughing along at 18 knots. It is a remarkable fact of life about sailing in the open sea, that with hundreds of miles of room to play with, you always seem to find yourself on a constant bearing with a ship or another yacht, meaning that avoiding action needs to be taken by someone, usually you!! (as was the case again today.)

Around 5.00pm we arrived at the bay and anchorage that we had selected as being both well protected and handy for tomorrow's trip of another 75+ miles to Palma. Plenty of yachts already here at anchor, but still some room, so we selected a spot carefully and anchored in about 11 metres of water. Over the next hour or so the wind dropped, but the big swell out at sea seemed to alter course slightly into the bay and set all of us rolling quite badly, but such is life! Sarah decided that I badly needed a haircut, so she did this (she has been cutting my hair for years now) on the back of the boat. Fine, except that with the rolling, I was lucky to keep both ears.

Both went swimming in the beautiful clear blue warm water and whilst Sarah went off to inspect the other boats in the anchorage, I checked the lie and hold of our anchor and dived under our boat a few times to inspect the water intake for the generator in preparation for the repair on Thursday.

A really great day and if only we could have caught a fish to put on the BBQ it might have been perfect.

Early start again tomorrow.