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Hugh, Anne and Hector's Sailing Adventures
Hi Folks
Well we made it to Palma in time for Alex and Ruby to catch their flight home, which shows that tight schedules can be made, but they are definitely not recommended. We have had to rush through so many interesting places instead of stopping to explore them. I think I was so focussed on just getting to the Med, that I really didn't give any thought to how far it is from Faro to Palma (562miles). It meant that instead of a relaxing cruise for Alex and Ruby, they had unwittingly signed up for some serious passage making and very few recreational stops - lucky thing they really like sailing - it was great having them onboard and we were able to run 4 hour watches for the night passages we made.
I meant to mention earlier that Tim has a web page with a map on it that plots our position (when I send him the details) and if you are interested take a look at it on
http://www.tjstephens.com/pages/mapping/
I've been feeling very guilty about bringing Hector with us over these last few days. I think he is thoroughly sick of passage making, especially with all the rough seas we've had and is also finding the heat a bit much to bear. He perks up quickly enough when we get into port, but now that we have arrived in Majorca I'm hoping we have a more relaxing time and I can persuade the mad captain to stay in port when the weather gets rough.
Gibraltar is a very strange place - apparently people either love it or hate it and I'd be rushing to judgement to say that I hated it - but I definitely didn't like it. It was dirty and expensive. The Safeway supermarket was awful - I'm sure that all the fruit and veg had been re-imported from England as it was chilled out of existence and was strangely colourless and tasteless - mad or what.
Our passage out of Gibraltar started quite badly as the seas were huge and as Hugh mentioned we had to navigate a safe passage through a lot of huge cargo ships. Things quietened down after a few hours and I made dinner, then we were joined by a big group of dolphins that swam with the boat for ages. They would race alongside us, then dive under the bow and circle back to do it again, they were also swimming on their sides so they could have a look at us staring at them. I'm fairly sure they belonged to the Spanish Olympic Dolphin Team as they pulled some amazing synchronised swimming stunts and made some spectacular leaps into the air.
After all that excitement, Alex and I were sitting opposite each other in the cockpit and the sea was still quite rough, when a wave reared up behind me and promptly dumped itself all over me - I was well and truly pooped! Alex didn't have time to warn me as it happened so quickly. Ruby also saw it happening from the cabin and just watched in amazement as I got soaked back and front and the cockpit was awash with at least 3 inches of water (i.e. umpteen gallons) some of which made it through the hatch onto Hector, who was equally unamused.
After Garrucha, the wind and the sea died down completely and we then settled in for some 80 hours of motoring to Majorca. Hugh mentioned that the water pump failed with much screeching and black smoke and he and Alex did a fantastic job in sweltering conditions to replace the whole thing and get us back on course in about an hour. What he didn't mention was that as soon as we were becalmed and without engine a huge cargo ship appeared from nowhere and started bearing down on us - it was the only vessel for miles and it appeared to be heading right for us. Luckily the radar confirmed that it was in fact going to miss us by less than a third of a mile!
Must go now as we are catching a bus into Palma for the evening.
Anne
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