During Roy and Paul’s watch the winds died and on went the engine again, but at the change of watch back to the girls, a fly infestation had to be dealt with before the boys could go to bed.
With the girls left to their own devices, the wind picked up soon afterwards, so the headsail was unfurled and off went the engine, allowing us to sail along nicely under a double-reefed main and a full headsail. However, like someone switched off the lights, the winds died again at around 0545.
With the overcast sky, night gave way to a rather miserable, gloomy day, but a slight increase in the wind speeds to around 12 Kts just after breakfast, allowed us to shake out the mainsail, unfurl the headsail and set a course in the general direction of southwest, giving us a SOG (Speed Over Ground) of around 6.2 Kts.
However, after the girls went off watch at around 0830, unexpected mayhem developed on Paw Paw, of which the girls were completely oblivious and slept through it all.
Out of the blue, without warning, the winds increased to 28 Kts sustained. With that, the main was sheeted in as tightly as possible to reduce the sail area, the headsail was furled to a slither and Paw Paw was turned onto a deep broad reach to slow her down as much as possible, all of which still made for a feisty SOG of 10 Kts. It didn’t help matters that the wind direction then veered from northeast to southeast in a matter of seconds.
It was just before noon when the wind suddenly dropped as quickly as it had increased, forcing Roy to wake Elaine in order to get the mainsail down during the lull. Since the weather forecasts hadn’t mentioned any of this, we had no idea what we were in for for the rest of the day and decided not to run the risk of getting caught out again with a full mainsail up in these very flaky conditions, which seemed to come in bands for the rest of the afternoon, allowing us to sail, but using our trusty headsail alone and giving us a SOG of around 8 Kts when the wind increased to 15-20 Kts.
Will calm restored, Elaine opted to try and go back to sleep, leaving Roy to do the SSB/HF radio net, but to no avail. Instead she had a shower, had some lunch and sent Roy to bed. Paul had already found his bed, while Justine enjoyed some quiet time at the helmstation, listening to her audiobook and looking out for dolphins. Since these were not forthcoming, she resorted to counting little white seahorses.
The winds continued to fluctuate and by 1600 we had 17-21 Kts, giving us a SOG of 8-8.9 Kts, the latter while Paul cooked dinner; aubergine burgers.
With the churned up sea conditions too, it seemed we were in for a stormy night, with not a single weather forecast helping us to figure out a plan of action, so, we did nothing, leaving Paw Paw to sail on the full headsail alone.
After a very tasty dinner, dessert was peaches and custard; we were very pleased with ourselves in having completed the bulk of the provisioning in Gibraltar. That included the “goody bags” Elaine had put together for everyone for the passage. It was, of course, a competition on who could hold out the longest before breaking theirs open. Justine, followed by Roy in quick succession this afternoon and then Elaine tonight broke the spell. It appears Paul is the only one onboard with any will power. The trick now was to see who could make their goodies last the entire passage.
Our entertainment for the day, however, excluding the numerous sail changes, engines going off and on, Paw Paw crawling to flying along, the fly infestation, etc, was watching the other yachts around us as some crisscrossed our bow like a yoyo, others our stern and some literally going in circles around us, as they too figured out what to so with this weather.
