Monday 20^th May 2023

North Atlantic Ocean 36^o 29.9N 07^o 49.0W 

Blog by David  (Time Zone: BST)

Firstly:  Cape St Vincent

Cape St Vincent, Portugal

Hooray, we rounded the corner about 09.30AM today!!

The approach had been more exciting that we anticipated – this is the chart plotter screen as we neared the corner.  We are the black shape in the middle of the circles; the green objects bearing down on us are merchant ships which are approaching or emerging at speed  from the traffic separation scheme (mauve at the bottom) around Cape St Vincent  which is the yellow land in the bottom right,

I was on watch – quite entertaining it was too!

Anyway we are now approaching Gibraltar – we should be there late Tuesday afternoon.

Twitchers Anonymous

The term Twitcher can be applied to a number of different character types.  Firstly, and obviously, it can refer to someone with a tic – or,  in the vernacular,  perhaps a chap wearing a Mac.

It became clear early on that Toby is an inveterate Twitcher of a different kind – endlessly adjusting the sails to get optimum performance from the boat. It has been good to have him aboard really since he has saved me from my own compulsion.

But then, today, it became clear that Terry, too is a Twitcher – the kind that grabs the binoculars or his camera every time a bird appears.  There has been evidence of it all through the passage – but I had thought it was part of a broader interest in his surroundings, spotting and identifying marine life as it presented itself.  And perhaps it was, but today we had a visitor.   

Our overnight guest arrived for Tea

What gave Terry away as a recidivist Twitcher was that he immediately put a name to it.  It is  Lesser Whitethroat, he announced authoritatively, apparently a late migrant from North Africa to Europe. It’s related to the Whitethroat he has in his garden in Gosport.

I don’t know if he is right or not – I’ve no reason to doubt him -  but our guest evidently brought its overnight bag because it then tucked its head under its wing and settled down for the night in my cabin!

I hope it doesn’t snore!

If just been into the cabin again and thoughtlessly turned on the light. It just turned around away the light.