Lat: 37:11.8. N : Long: 001:10.7 E. - Monday, 28th July, in the Mediterranean, en route to Didim, Turkey.
Sulana's Voyage
Alan and Sue Brook
Mon 28 Jul 2014 16:49
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Lat: 37:11.8. N : Long: 001:10.7 E. Monday,
28th July, in the Mediterranean, en route to Didim, Turkey.
With a new washer-drier safely installed
(Hooray!), the Apes seen, the Siege and WW11
tunnels visited and the Rock well and truly toured, "Sulana" departed
Gibraltar on the afternoon of July 26th. at 17:00 (UTC + 02:00)
having first topped up with cheap diesel fuel for the long motor trip ahead in a
flat sea..
There is no forecast of any wind to speak of
for quite a while ahead and then what does come might well be too strong and on
the nose! So we are destined to make a long motor trip of this, to try to get
ahead of any bad weather changes. Probably (almost certainly) we will need
to refuel in Sardinia, maybe Sicily, or Malta, but these last two
are probably too far).
So the last day and a half has been spent
under engine, reading and looking out for any Cetaceans, on behalf of our new
French friend from Sao Miguel, Dr. Alexandre Gannier, of GREC. I had, obviously
clearly misguidedly, always thought the Med was a fairly barren sea, vastly
over-fished, but, judging by the number of very healthy looking dolphins we have
seen so far, I must be wrong. They are clearly feeding well enough on fish and
squid, or whatever.
Within 24 hours and, especially just after
passing close to that weirdest looking of places, the Island of Alboran, we
found ourselves logging pod after pod of dolphins of virtually every type! We
have already seen two small families of 'Grampus', better-known to Science as
Risso's Dolphin, as well as varying size groups of Bottlenose, Common,
Striped and Rough-toothed dolphins as well. At least that is what
Alan 'thinks' they are. Apart from the Grampus, which is quite easy, once
seen, the others are all somewhat difficult to get exact identification
correct each time. Our information is all being logged and will be forwarded on
to GREC when we arrive in Turkey for them to use.
Now we just need to order up and fit a
new hot water calorifier, to exchange with our old one, which we now know to be
the cause of the engine coolant leak, Having shut off the hot water flow from
the engine to the calorifier before we left Gib, we have been 'pleased' to find
that no more coolant has leaked out. Meaning it must have gone through the
calorifier system somewhere. Now, how do we get a new calorifier - the size of
a medium-sized dog, into Turkey?!
That's all for now. Back to Dolphin
Watch.
Alan, Nelius and
Will. |