Gibraltar to Madeira
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Fri 1 Oct 2010 08:02
> The weather was fine and sunny and the winds light as we entered the Straits of Gibraltar. Spain, on our right was bathed in sunshine and on our left we could see the Atlas mountains in North Africa shrouded in cloud and looking very mysterious. As before we encountered a lot of traffic in this area and we had to keep a good lookout at all times. As night fell we were treated to the first of four beautiful clear starry nights. We had agreed a watch system which effectively divided the days into two parts as there was about 12 hours daylight, between 8am and 8pm, and 12 hours darkness. During the night we worked on a two hours on, two hours off rota and during the day, three hours on, three hours off. This worked well and by day 3 we had definitely got into the swing of things and even managed to spend a couple of hours together in the afternoons.
> John had a particularly testing watch on the first night trying to avoid the local fishing fleet and their nets which they spread half way across the Ocean, although they did radio any boats getting too close to warn them. Despite these warnings some boats were pretty difficult about changing course and moving out of the way, and the fishermen were clearly getting very exasperated! John had a conversation with one of the fishing boats when he realised that the boat that was being asked to change course slightly was ours. The fishing boat politely asked us to head slightly north to avoid both damaging the nets & fouling our rudder - seemed very reasonable to us!!
> For extra security whilst we were on night watches, we decided to try out the Man Overboard alarms supplied by Raymarine which set off an alarm through the whole boat should someone go overboard. Despite the fact that I was sleeping in the saloon area of the boat, John's alarm went off twice and I heard nothing at all - good job they were false alarms & he hadn't actually gone overboard! The tags turned out to be faulty as they activated at random and at one point we had all six going off at various times and we couldn't reset the system which was infuriating! Eventually after about 4 hours we decided to read the manual and found out that we just had to press one button and the noise would stop! Peace at last.
> By lunchtime on Saturday, we had done 120 miles and the wind had picked up from about 2-5 knots to about 15 knots and we hoisted the sails and killed the engine. We coasted along for a few hours until the wind dropped again and we had to start the engine. The sea was calm with the huge rolling swells the Atlantic Ocean is known for.
> Sunday lunchtime and all this changed - the swells became much shorter waves and the wind picked up considerably and we had a rather uncomfortable 24 hours or so. Even with the engine on, the wind was directly on our nose and the tide was so strong & the waves so big that we managed only about 2.5 - 3 knots of speed. This lasted all night until mid-afternoon on Monday when we had a welcome break. The winds dropped and we hoisted the sails once more, and started to relax a bit. By Monday lunchtime we had caught up a bit of time and had done 470 miles - only about 130 to go!
> On Monday we tested the watermaker which basically desalinates & purifies sea water so we can use it to drink & wash. It tastes a bit strange at first as the water is so clean and pure (no fluoride etc) but is fine once you get used to it (or you add some cordial!)
> Tuesday morning at 10.30am brought our first sight of land since Friday evening and was an exciting moment - we were nearly there! Winds again had dropped to less than 8 knots and we motored on past Porto Santo to arrive in Madeira at 6pm - four days and 6 hours after we had set off!
> We planned a night out to celebrate and went to the only bar in the marina - the marina is miles from anywhere! We had grand ideas of champagne etc, but these were dashed when we asked for the wine list - the main menu listed red, white and rose wine by the bottle at about €10 each, no brands mentioned at all. The waitress looked very confused when we asked if there was a choice of wine, she clearly thought red, white or rose was choice enough and that we should be grateful for that! That said we had an excellent meal, the food was delicious.
> I did not take any pictures on the crossing but these photos, taken before we left the UK will give you a very good idea of how Seaduced looks under full sail.
>