37:35.78N 00:59.10W

Sat 14^th August to Tuesday 17^th August, passage from Sardinia to Cartagena, Spain.

We woke up on Saturday to the very unfamiliar sound of raindrops falling on the deck. Actually it was hosing down for a short while and the wind was blowing in from the seaward side so the bay was a very lumpy, bumpy, cold, wet and rather inhospitable place to be. There were only a handful of boats there with us and the first to leave was a very pretty 35 ft English yacht which had a pretty torrid time trying to recover their anchor whilst their bows kept plunging into each oncoming wave.

Our plan was to leave around 2.00 pm but as usual I had pottered about and got everything ready too early and was keen to be off, so we left around midday assuming that this wind was very favourable for our trip. Of course things never quite work out like that when you are sailing and no sooner were we off the southern point of the island than we found ourselves headed by the fickle wind and were now close hauled and tacking well south of our chosen route. Several tacks and two hours later the wind began to veer nicely and by 2.30 pm we were on a fast reach with the cutter rig set, making 7 knots in just 9 knots of true wind and all was well. (It also gave Sarah her opportunity to point out more than once that if we had waited........etc.)

This was also the precise moment that we clocked our 10,000^th mile since leaving Sweden in June 2007 which was probably more deserving of a drink of fizzy rather than the cup of coffee that we actually had to celebrate.

At dusk the wind began to drop away and the direction backed making it harder and harder to hold the course we wanted. There was only 1 hour of a quarter moon and then it was very dark indeed, until around 11.00 pm when the night sky over Africa to the south of us was lit almost continuously by a huge and unremitting electrical storm. No sound of thunder where we were, but constant lightning flashes spread along almost half the horizon. Neither of us much enjoy these events and we were grateful to be speeding our way parallel and away from the presumed track of the storm. By 3.00 am Sunday morning the lightening was reducing, to be replaced by a thrilling display of shooting stars and stunning phosphorescence lighting up our wake as we continued to surge through the calm seas.

Around 8.00 am I started fishing and during the course of the day tried various different options and was beginning to get a little nervous that we might be going to fail today when around 3.00 pm the reel started to scream and sure enough we soon had another 3 kilo tuna in the fridge. We rigged the twins ready for the forecast downwind run, but it never happened and we were left on a broad reach with a growing uncomfortable swell and little real wind to drive us on so we motored for a while and were grateful when in the early evening the wind began to fill in and we could kill the engine for a peaceful sail again.

During the night though the seas began to build from a blow elsewhere and began to make our ride very uncomfortable, added to which the boom would swing to windward as the boat rolled in the waves and then crash back out as the wind filled the sail again. By the early hours we had to put a stop to all this and were back motor sailing with the mainsail pulled in tight. This became very tedious and by morning the seas were really quite big and very steep, so as they swept up behind us and loomed over our stern rail you really sometimes wondered if they might not just sweep straight over the top of Serafina, but of course each and every time they passed under us and allowed us to semi surf down their fronts.

Eventually the wind veered enough for us to set the twins in the full downwind mode and Serafina fairly flew along in a perfect rehearsal for the Atlantic, we hope! The wind rose above 20 knots but with a few rolls of the furlex everything remained fully under control. Sadly by the evening normal service was resumed and to keep our course we had to drop the downwind rig and set for a broad reach, but again we had the nightmare of the mainsail not having enough wind to hold it against the roll of the boat in the waves, so again it had to be sheeted in to protect the sail, the fittings and our nerves! We had only 12 knots of wind through the night but the seas did not seem to ease much and so we had another uncomfortable night and awoke to a very cloudy morning sky and a forecast that seemed to hint at the possibility of more rain, but little wind. At 11.00 am we re-crossed the meridian (the north south line of zero Longitude that passes through Greenwich)

Tried a bit more fishing and got very excited by a big strike in the early afternoon, but by the time we had slowed the boat etc. whatever it was had escaped without being hooked which was a shame and the only consolation was a bullet tuna that we caught as we prepared to make our approach to Cartagena.

Made our way into the large naval base and commercial port that is Cartagena and approached the Club Regatta Marina with the faint pitter patter of rain again briefly. Very rarely since we left the UK have we been back to any individual port as our journey has been remorselessly outward bound and then this summer we have headed back through the Med on a different route from the Middle East, so Cartagena is a first in that respect. We called in here in 2008 for a few days and were very taken with the place and of course this was where we encountered the marinera dressed and looking remarkably like Laura Croft, not that influenced our decision to come here in any way.....

It was 7.00 pm and the night duty marinero (actually they call them the ‘sailor’ now)was on call but his lack of any English, our lack of Spanish (I am now so befuddled by all the languages we have encountered over the past three months that I can barely utter anything intelligible) and his confusion in his own mind as to how he wanted to moor us up, led to a difficult 30 minutes before we were tied up safely and ready for a cold drink.

The SSB radio net that we conducted just as we made our approach to the harbour revealed that Apparition are on their way here from Mahon and hope to be here in two days, but neither of us has been able to raise Scott Free who could be here later today if they have stuck to their plans.