Our adventures resume with Barry. Bob and I returning to Vilamoura on Wednesday to prepare and victual before our departure on the 520 mile passage to Madeira once Stephen arrived on Friday.
The forecast was for good reaching on Friday night but, unfortunately, Stephen succumbed to reaching of a different nature in the evening and was confined to his berth throughout the night.
Stephen is our ‘yacht medic’ (Williams, not Maturin) and he did not have a good day. After landing at Faro Airport, he found himself locked in a toilet cubicle when the handle broke and had to be rescued – he actually phoned his daughter in the UK for help……? Soon after our departure, he tried his hand at fishing and managed to get the line wound into the wind generator putting that out of action, then he was violently ‘tom and dick’ all night. Let’s hope he bounces back today!
After two reefs through the night, sun up and the wind dropped and veered so a direct course puts the wind too far aft for a smooth sail with the swells spinning Hejira and flogging the sails as they pass under so, while the crew sleep, it is a case of heading up onto a more comfortable point of sail until they surface and we can review our sail plan.
A fine warm morning with only thin cloud after a cool damp night. With the swells gradually reducing after the blow in the night, Hejira is a little more comfortable off the wind and we are able to lay a better course towards Funchal, several days away.
It is now 9.45am and there is no sign of any other crew which is not surprising as they had a bit of a night of it with heavy traffic through the separation lanes off Cape St. Vincente. With this blog being partly experimental as I have not previously posted via the Satellite compression software, I am inclined to despatch it to see if it all works, so expect them ‘thick and fast’ hereafter.
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