Setting sail again

After almost 3 weeks in Gibraltar, we are now setting sail again, this time our destination is the Canary Islands! It will be the longest trip yet, at 688 Nm, but if the weather doesn't misbehave it should take about 5 to 6 days. The island we are aiming for is Gran Canaria.

In Gibraltar

We are now moored in Ocean Village Marina, Gibraltar, after a pretty hard trip from Cartagena. We did get the wind with us this time, but when it reaches storm strength, it isn't that comfortable anymore. It took 3 days. All crew were well when we came to port.

Then we experienced another storm yesterday night. This time our boat was struck into the concrete pontoon, which we obviously couldn't let happen. The anchoring rope also fastened itself in our propeller. Some english guys came over and helped us out so that we got a line from another pontoon directly behind the boat, holding us off. This whole thing took a few hours, and we didn't get to bed before around 3am.

Leaving for Gibraltar

We are leaving Cartagena today, going towards Gibraltar. If the weather is anything like the forecast says, we should be able to get there in a few days. If the weather goes bad we'll find a sheltered anchorage (we are sailing along the coast, so there's bound to be one close by). It's about 225 nautical miles to sail.

Hasta pronto!
Thorstein

Cartagena!

We arrived in Cartagena on Saturday after a days sail from San Pedro. Not too much wind, but we had fog! It was the first time that we were navigating with the aid of a fog horn. We heard the sound from the light house at Cabo the Pelos far ahead of us as the coast landscape disappeared, and we could easily recognise it as we passed. Of course, we have all the other means of knowing where we are, map, GPS, radar, but it was comforting to hear that we were on the right track!

Cartagena has lots of history and so far we have barely started exploring it. We visited the new Museo Arqueologico Submarine this morning. And have picked a few others for tomorrow. But we have had visiting friends from Norway on board, and we will visit them in their holiday home today! Teenagers even, so it is great for Ingeborg and Thorstein.

When the new ceramic top for our cooker arrives from England we will either sail on to a new destination or stay to finish the repair. It depends on the weather most of all.

A bumpy sail to San Pedro de Pinatar!

We arrived on the peninsula, by Torrevieja just after midnight on the 22. The trip should have taken around 40 hours if we could have sailed a straight line.. The weather forecasts were not too bad before we started, but it turned out they were too optimistic! We sailed almost twice the distance and spent more then 80 hours at sea. The wind direction was not NW as we had thought it would be, but SW.. Met a gale south east of Ibiza that gusted up to 40 knots.. This was our first sail after the dismasting so we didn't like it very much.. There were thunderstorms visible on the sky to the west, so Ibiza did not seem like a nice rescue either. After heaving to for some hours, to see if things would change, we decided to turn around and go north of Ibiza. We had reefed down as much as we could, and had reduced the speed to 4-5 knots. It was sunny and the conditions were not too bad on board. But the appetite for food was reduced.. Poor Ingeborg was sick, and ended up sleeping in the cockpit all through the second night. North west of Ibiza we tried to steer as close to our destination as possible, but the wind kept blowing directly in our faces. We expected lighter winds, and maybe from a different direction closer to the coast and steered a northwesterly course towards Valencia. As we approached the coast we realized the wind was rather stronger than lighter. To avoid being trapped north of the cape separating Costa Brava and Costa Blanca we decided to turn around and sail in the SE direction. Eventually the wind died down a bit and it was time to start the engine. We could relax after a tough "come-back" at sea. The appetite was back and we enjoyed delicious meals of hot sausages with bread, coffe, cereals and bisquits.. The last distance was split by a night at anchor off Torrevieja. We enjoyed a good night sleep and could arrive in a quite good shape in San Pedro the day after.
All in all it had been a good sail, even if it was a bit tougher than we had wanted for testing the new equipment..

Back again..

We turned around after half an hour. A leakage in a diesel line this time.. Well, it's a small thing and we don't want to get depressed over such a bagatelle. Now we'll meet with the people from Rigging Mar again tomorrow, and we will hopefully get rid of the sinus infections that has caught up with us the last week. And I will have time to write up some reports and load up more photos to our web page before we leave.
Gjertrud

Goodbye Mallorca!

We are leaving Mallorca today! We have sails on the boat, but they are not quite perfect yet. So we will get them done in Murcia on the mainland. That is where the factory is. We hope that we won't get in more trouble, and that we can leave Murcia shortly after we're there. We think the trip will take about 40 hours, so that we are there the day after tomorrow. Wish us good luck!

Mom will come back with a more extensive report from our time on Mallorca. Hasta luego!
- Ingeborg