Crossing Biscay

A significant journey. A bit of wind, a lot of wind, no wind. Blue skies, red skies black skies. 0.5m swell, 2m swell. Some sleep. No sleep!

354 N Mile. 48 Hours. Average speed of over 6.5 knots.

Having left in a bit of a rush on Wednesday evening, we dined on Pasta & Pesto and as a desert, …… custard with digestive biscuits and dark chocolate!

We then readied the boat and hoisted the sails west of Boyard and sailed in 15 knots for 9 hours on a beam reach.

Sadly the wind died at 03:00 meaning engine on, which remained the situation for 30 hours. So we set to washing and cleaning.

Lunch was Pete’s homemade mackerel patè. Look how much we got out of the 4 mackerel!

The afternoon was spent reading, fishing and sleeping.

At dusk we were joined by a chaffinch, who was supremely confident, flying in the cockpit and even sitting on Peter’s shoulder.

Rich, kindly cooked dinner during which Pete told us he had read a possible reason why neither of the fishing lines had caught anything all day, which was that it is more likely to catch a fish at dawn or dusk. Lo & behold, we caught the best fish – albacore tuna – just as he spoke!

We then readied for the night watch. The weather closed in with serious rain clouds ahead.

We tried to weave between two of the cloud towers, and saw water spouts abound.

We had a pretty rough night, heading directly into the wind, meaning we could not sail, but also into the waves which picked up to about 2 m. That meant the bow riding up a wave and slamming down the back. Pretty hard if not impossible to sleep.

Our 2 hour on 6 off watch was pretty academic as we were all up at 4 am!

The following day we had a great run with wind in the right direction allowing us to turn the engine off. It had been on for 30 hours and burned our entire tank 1 of 200l of diesel. We switched to tank 2 and luckily didn’t need it.

Pete marinaded his freshly caught Tuna with Soy, garlic, chilli and ginger.

So arriving offshore A Corunia in the dark, and with fair winds and the crew refreshed we have decided to continue down the coast.

More to follow.