As planned it is the hardest weather window to find. As I arrived there was a nice 5 days northerly we could not use as we were not ready. No crew, boat not reviewed, no beer enjoyed in our favorite waterhole in Cadiz. So we then go stuck through southerly for a bit more than a week. As usual it becomes an endless topic for discussion. Specially as we are now contemplating riding a storm… Early start 48h before the northerly storms comes down should give us enough land clearance to get the wind sideways instead of on the nose. A tricky decision but one we made so here we are on the 17th motoring out south westerly with a storm warning set for the 19th. It will turn out that the storm was truly a major one with inundations and its amounts of destructions along his path all the way to Barcelona and the French Riviera… But as you can read these line, we were meant to pass specially as the storm was named : Gloria. Nothing could happen to us except a few seasickness feeling and some
very cold very wind nights ahead.
A couple of nights in the trip we are now getting the 30 knots winds. After the night in Valencia, this is the second true test of strength for Rafa and Happy Days. The stronger the wind the easier it is for Rafa to helm on wind mode but 30knots should start to be too much. But here he is helming 24/7 without complains. I definitely remains our best friend on board. The sea states has increase and everyone is sleeping longer or having trouble sleeping. All affected but catching the forecast helps a lot the moral as we are expecting a 4th and 5th day very quiet…
In the mean time, boat discovery continue with the resurgence a leak right in the middle of the boat. Some green water, looking like engine coolant appears continuously, Engine ?, sink ?, Bathroom is our 3 potential culprit. As the water is green, nobody seems willing to taste it to confirm if it salt or fresh water. A slight smell of detergent is not really helpful. So morning and evening, I am down on 4 legs cleaning the bildge and getting a couple of crappy liquid out of the boat. (Such a pleasure).
Last day and we can see Gran Canaria lights all night to let us know that our trip is reaching the end. We could even distinguished the northern Lanzarote island the afternoon before. We are motoring all night to get there with 2m of remaining swell and not really enough wind to hold the sail steady. But at 3 AM, I found out that our fuel gauge decided to jump down from 43% to 10%without warning…. Aiaiai, everybody on watch, raising sails again and slowly aiming for Las Palmas. It will turn out to be such a soft nice sail that Jason would basically take his watch and the helm at 5AM to stay on deck until 1PM that we arrived
COME BACK!!! I’ll be adding some pics and more to the story!!! When traveling full internet sometimes is trouble!
Happy Days 