Gibraltar to Madeira

October 4^th 2013

We are now on are way to Madeira.

We wanted to arrive in Madeira in good time for Bob and Cathy to explore Madeira before their flight back to Canada shortly. Also, we were excited to e meeting up again with our new friends Jim and Susie that we had met in Malta. They had an apartment on Madeira.

We left beautiful La Linea at midday and first had motor around the bay to Gibraltar to fill up with ‘no-tax’ fuel – why not? 

Finally.
We had the wind and the current flowing in the right direction to go westerly through the Channel out to the Atlantic Ocean.  There was sense of FREEDOM and ESCAPE!!
To be out of the Mediterranean and INTO the vast Atlantic Ocean with it’s tides, currents and sheer POWER!!  

First job.
Get to the African coastline across the shipping channel from here.

The shipping lanes are very busy with huge tankers all through this region.
We motored this section westerly along the northern coast of Spain and then crossed south at Tariffa towards Tangier in Morocco dodging the ships as we motored. 
By 19:25 we were putting the sails up and sailing towards Madeira on a perfect direct line with a great wind. The north-south current down the Atlantic coast should now also help us on to Madeira and then the Canary Islands.

The sun set 30 minutes later.

BEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!!  BRRRRRRR….

BEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!  BRRRRRRR….

It was midnight. Bob was on watch. John was asleep.

A bilge pump alarm went off!

I jumped up!

We had to find the source.

Oh no! 
It was the main bilge pump!
Were we sinking!

I woke John immediately. That was when I heard the main water pump powering  ON, as well. But there was no reason for that pump to be ON?

I switched OFF the pump. I noticed that the FULL tank of water we had just left La Linea with was almost on EMPTY!   I took over from Bob on watch.

Great!
There was about 30 fishing boats of some kind, all in a row in front of us about 5 miles away as well!
Some were only showing a single white light. Bob had already altered course to go around them.
John went to find the source of the leak. 
It didn’t take long for John to discover that the UV filter casing had broken and this unit was in the main feed from the water tanks. 
The water pump thought that it needed to supply water into the bilge. The main bilge pump did it’s job of clearing out this water into the ocean – very fast too!

Very impressive! (Maybe we might have liked this demonstration of it’s pumping capabilities at another time?)

Decision time.
John now had a UV bulb dangling from a cracked casing. We had no way to get the water out of the tanks via the taps anymore. We do carry spares but they are currently under a bed and it is now 1:30am in the morning.  Hmmm…

The UV filter module would be a nightmare to work on as it is in the depths of Timeless – particularly at sea.
John decided to bypass the filter by jury rigging the pipes around it and then worry about the details in the morning.  It worked. We now had water.
The pumps all stopped as normal.

We were now out of sync with watches but I stayed with John for a little longer.

Is it a bird?

Is it a plane?

No! It’s …‘something?’

Remember those fishing boats on the horizon?

Suddenly one of the white lights on the horizon came racing towards us! Like very fast and very close. He circled to our stern and hovered.
I was thinking are they trying to tell us to keep away from the boats?
John is saying, “don’t slow down”.
John turned our night vision camera on for a better look.

The light came within 20 feet then went to the back of the boat, hovered and then switched off his bright light. 

That was it. Finished.
??????

30 minutes later the same thing happened again.
We were now just about to go past all these boats that were a few miles to the north of us. This time unfortunately the sail was in the way of the night vision camera and we could not see what was approaching.
The same thing. The boat came close, went to the aft of the boat but this time did not turn off their light for ages.
The boat then started to head towards Morocco. 
That was it. Finished.

We can only think they were checking that we had no fishing lines maybe?

At daylight I remembered that we had a fail safe manual foot water pump for the water tanks. So we would have been ok after all.

Now the Heads don’t flush too well!

Damb! The toilets are now not flushing too well.

John bled the seawater pump and we are back in business. Details.

John now put the water-maker ON and made half a tank of water pretty quickly. This is a great water maker.
We have plenty of water again. There are some lessons about water, long sails and redundancy to be thought about here.

The next 24 hours are uneventful, the wind is good, the sea swell less than 2 meters and we are on course making good progress.  Then, October 6^th a rogue wave hit us.

John is drenched.
Bob & I are partly soaked.
The drinking glasses are knocked off the table.

Bob and I fall into uncontrolled laughter at the sight of John – drenched from head to toe!

We all saw the funny side of it, but it also shows how powerful the sea can be without even trying. 
We were making very good time. ‘Timeless’ was reaching SOG well over 9 knots. The wind was expected to diminish later so we kept our speed going.

“This is Voyageur, Voyageur, Voyageur.”

On channel 16 we heard a message from a yacht called “Voyageur” and another vessel.  There was a conversation mentioning that they were reefed would be arriving at 7am.

“Could it be the “Voyageur” sailing yacht that we  know?”

Could it be Ken & Carol from Humber Sailing Club?

Ken had built his own boat and was now sailing it around the world with Carol and the occasional sailing student. The odds were pretty low that it would be them. We hadn’t heard from them in several years and they had long left Canada for Europe.

As it happens, on a long shot, John had emailed them back in Gibraltar asking if they needed any of our redundant charts for the Mediterranean and/or where were they anyway?  We hadn’t heard back from them.

Anyway.
The wind was 15knots+ all night and we saw Madeira at daybreak. With less than 10 miles to go the wind died and we motored to the marina Quinta de Lorde. I radioed in at the entrance and we were greeted by marina staff in a RIB who showed us to the ‘alongside’ mooring preciously reserved.  This is looking like a super marina..