Next stop East Ferry

We had an early start getting up in the dark. I had to drop back the marina key to the office. Unfortunally there was still no sign of Pedro who said he'd be there at 07.00 so instead I tied the key onto his door handle and headed back to Eureka. The result was we left the marina at 07.14, fourteen minutes late, not bad!

It was chilly when we left and there was little or no wind so we had to motor.
Two hours and ten minutes later, we had Finisterre on our beam, the ‘End of the Earth’.
It must have been scary leaving land behind and wondering when are you going to fall off the edge in the days when people believed the earth was flat.

I had plotted a course to take us north of the traffic separation zone off the north west of Spain. The wind was still light and from the north east for the first few hours. If we had tied to sail, we’d have crossed the separation zone and to do it legally we’d have to cross it at right angles which would have taken us too far west out into the Atlantic. This would only add to our journey so instead we continued to motor but had hoisted the mainsail in case we got a breeze from the right direction and headed towards the edge of the zone.

The wind was up and down during the day. At times going up to 20 knots and causing a swell to start and at other times hardly a breath .
At 15.30 we had lots of dolphins around us but they didn’t pay us much attention. I presume they were feeding and had more important things of their minds rather than playing with boats.

After nearly ten hours we reached the northern edge of the traffic separation at 17.00 and were able to unfurl the genny and turn off the engine. The silence except for the noise of the water slipping past the hull was lovely and peaceful and we began to sail on a beat on a starboard tack making 4.3 knots.

Ireland was due north of us but due to the wind direction we were at first heading NNE towards Greenland.
The forecast was for the winds to be from NE, force 2-4 today. Tomorrow afternoon it was to go round to the SW and pick up a little to force 3-4 before going to the NW as we closed on the Irish coast.

As a yacht can’t sail directly into the wind but can only sail about 35 degrees each side of it. The closest we could sail towards Ireland was the course we were sailing today which averaged out at 330 degrees which was nearly NNW.

One advantage of this course was that it was keeping us out of the Bay of Biscay which has a very bad reputation in bad weather. If we had changed direction to have the wind on the other side of the sails, we would have been heading NE into the bay towards Brest in France and we didn’t want that!

So the plan was to keep out of Biscay and keep slightly west of a line direct to Cork.
Today we could only head towards Greenland, a bit further west than we wanted. Then as the wind changed tomorrow we'd be able to change course towards the Fasnet.
Later, about the time when we'd be due west of Brest we'd change course bit by bit toward Cork as the wind changed to the NW which would allow us to continue sailing despite the wind shift straight for Cork Harbour.
Basically our course, all going well, would look like a slight curve to the west between the north west of Spain and Cork. Hope you're still with me?

The forecast had also showed a compact gale crossing over Ireland on Sunday but we didn’t have to worry about that as it would be well north of us and gone by the time we got anywhere near it. At that stage I expected we would be about 250 miles south of Cork and about 260 miles west of the port of Lorient in France, in other words, about half way home and much too far south to be affected by the strong winds.

We had our dinner as the sun was going down on our first night at sea. With full stomachs we began the watches with Paddy taking the first one.
As before, we set our watches for three hours each and I allowed the crew to pick whatever one they wanted with me taking what was left over. A happy crew means a happy skipper or so I hoped.

Paddy had the first watch from 21.00-24.00, I did 00.00-03.00 and Tony 03.00 -06.00 as he like to see the dawn. Paddy took over again and so it continued.
But shortly after the wind began to die and we had the engine on but left up the main as we were joined by a few pods of dolphins and had a lovely sunset as we cut through the water as we shortened to home.

We quickly got into a routine. During the day we were relaxed about watches and sometimes one of us would appear on deck for short periods to keep the watch keeper company and to make the tea or coffee. The only time we were all guaranteed to be on deck was for dinner and we'd have a good chat as we ate. During the night we stuck to the watch system and got as much sleep as we could.
So far so good.Read more