Aside from numerous cargo ships for company, there wasn’t much else to entertain us and, after an hour into Elaine’s second watch, she was definitely wondering what she was going to do to occupy her mind; she’d checked the chartplotter and the radar at regular intervals, she’d filled in the Deck Log for the hour, she had posted our blog and answered a few emails; replies to messages sent earlier, in addition to enjoying a cup of tea and a slice of toast. Other than continuing to stare out the window, there was precious little else to do and she still had two hours to go! Writing this part of the blog, however, helped pass a few minutes before she pick up her book, one she hadn’t read in months. Fortunately she still remembered the storyline and didn’t have to backtrack. Roy had the same challenge on his watch, but had to start reading his book from the beginning again.
Once Roy woke from his slumber at around 0700, we had breakfast, following which Elaine trundled off to bed, woken only by a fly at around 1000. Resigned to getting up, she served some fruit and a cup of tea for both of us before it was Roy’s turn to trundled off to bed, since he was still short of a few hours of sleep, but not before he re-lashed the dinghy and put out a slither of the headsail, in the hope of adding something to our SOG (Speed Over Ground) in hardly a breath of wind. For some weird and wonderful reason we had a nasty current against us, which was contrary to the general current flow in the area, but we soldiered on regardless at 5.5 Kts; a far cry from yesterday’s speeds. Thankfully, though, it was much warmer than yesterday without the icy wind blowing; can’t have it all!
After downloading the weather, we knew we’d be in for a slow day until the slightly stronger forecast winds kicked in later. This was something we’d expected anyway when doing our passage planning. The trick was to get out of Gibraltar before the next band of unfavourable weather conditions arrived, which risked pinning us down for another week. Instead, we decided to accept the strong wind conditions getting through the strait and around Cape Spartel yesterday in order to progress on an improving weather window. It was the residual sea state associated with Storm Agnes that had prevented us from leaving sooner. We had to pick our poison again; calm winds and high seas or strong winds and moderate seas. We picked the latter.
After a lazy day of lounging around the saloon, reading and trying to take a nap, the latter pointless, since we’d both caught up on our sleep, Roy noticed a strange, but beautiful sparkle on the water to our port side. It didn’t last long, but neither of us had seen anything like it before and have no idea what it was.
Before we knew it, though, it was dinner time and time to start our night watches again. With that, Elaine trundled off to bed again, leaving Roy on watch until 2200. Other than one cargo ship that didn’t give an inch, forcing Elaine to change course until we’d passed port to port, her watch was uneventful too, thankfully, bringing our long day of motoring to a close. Unfortunately the forecast wind never arrived, but the nasty countercurrent abated for a few hours this afternoon.
