Next stop, Menorca

During the morning Paul & Mick headed off to find a supermarket while I attacked the rigging yet again as I had found the leeward shrouds were still too slack on our voyage to Sardinia.

Before we left the harbour I decided to change our identity as we were shortly going to be out of Italian waters and the next stop was Spain.
While Eureka was probably still on the Italian registrar as I had yet to hear officially that it had been removed and I would have to wait until I was in Ireland to put it on the Irish one. I decided that from now on I was going to fly under my own flag.
We dropped the Italian ensign and hoisted to Irish one and became an Irish ship. I don't think many noticed the difference as both flags are very similar.

The marina staff wanted us to move berths as there was someone else coming to our berth. Despite telling them that we’d be leaving shortly, they were fairly insistent in a friendly but firm way. As it turned out we did leave before required, just as we had told them earlier.

We left the marina at 11.30 in lovely sunny warm weather with the light winds but once outside the harbour the wind soon increased to 22 knots, a nice strong breeze.
We hoisted the main as soon as we had room and unfurled the genny soon afterwards.
We were soon close hauled on a course to get us past the Pointe Della Scorna, which is the north west corner of Sardinia.

Once we were settled down on our course Mick produced coffee and croissants which gave us a nice surprise. They were delicious. Mine was filled with lemon curd and I had a contented smile on my face by the time I had finished it.

We had barely finished eating them and were still licking our fingers when at 13.00 we had to put two reefs in the main and furl the genny as far as the shrouds as the wind strengthen.

Later in the afternoon the wind died and we took out the reefs again.
Unfortunately we gybed unexpectedly and the block holding up the lasyjacks parted company from the mast and we had to tidy up lots of string while we figured out what to do with it. It looked like the block was attached to the base of the lower spreaders with a piece of light cord and that due to old age it had parted with the shock caused by the gybe.
It was only when Dave Morey arrived at Alicante two weeks later that we had someone willing to go up the mast and got it got repaired.

As we got closer to the headland the wind slowly died and we motored along with just the mainsail up to get through the straits.
By 16.30 we were eventually through them and out in the open sea.

The final three hours of the voyage were frustrating with the wind, first continuing to change direction, causing us to have to tack and then dying so we finally had to motor but we were finally out of the straits and on the way to our next destination, the Port of Mahon in Menorca.

Any yachts were soon left behind and we found the seas empty of shipping.
We were going to be two nights at sea on this the second longest leg of the voyage home. The longest one would be across the Bay of Biscay between Spain and Ireland.

Shortly before 21.00 as the sun was setting, Paul went below to begin making another of his fantastic dinners as we continued to motor on calm seas at 5.5 knots to help extend of fuel as we had not filled up Castelsardo.
Why I can’t remember but possible it was because we felt we had enough, something we were to regret later.

We began out watches then we finished our dinner as we motored through a windless night.Read more