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The Weather forecast on our route
Portland to Plymouth 13-14
After 3 days of waiting for favourable winds to take us further South, finally the weather gods seem to be with us. The wind is still South West (bad for us, right on the nose) but has decreased from force 6 to 4 Beaufort. We leave in time because we have to sail around Portland bill (a large cape), where 7 tides are reported to come together and ‘terrific waves’ can easily topple small yachts like us. We are informed that there is no danger at slack (change of tides) so this is when we plan to be there. Although the waves are short and steep and we have to tack to get around ‘the bill’ we make it in time (hard work!) and manage to sail close hauled almost into the right direction. Plymouth is about 100 miles away, so about 24 hrs of sailing. In the evening the wind decreases and we sail into a beautiful night. We take shifts of 3 hours so each of us can get a comfortable sleep of 6 hours. There are even some stars. In the morning there is a nice sun and I try to catch some fish but fails despite the new used fishing rod and the promises of the Portland second hand stuff shopkeeper that it would catch ‘tons of fish no problem’.
During this, for a change, quiet trip, we have plenty of opportunities to relax, think and talk. Ton, who has just sold their own boat which was used as a home for a few years, is still saying every five minutes "on our boat, this (pointing at something) used to be there" but at the same time sighs every other 10 minutes how happy he is that the boat has been sold at long last, 3 weeks ago. It was a steel boat that needed constant attention. Mike, a very handy person whom we met in Portmouth made his job out of buying boats cheaply, fixing them up and reselling at three times the price. He had a special approach to selling boats, putting all his efforts in making the woman of the couple happy: new expensive stainless steel pans, curtains, cushions and everything must been spotlessly clean to satisfy the ‘female influencer’. He would not take the effort showing the boat to potential buyers that would not bring their wife. Of course, the boat should be in good shape, overall, but Mike would only pay attention to the wife when potential buyers came. Clever idea, since boats are generally a men’s thing so if you manage to make the woman enthousiastic, the man is likely to realise that this is an exception and follow.
With the 2 weeks delay that we have and the weather forecasts that does not look too good for a crossing to Spain in the short term, Mira is getting a bit nervous about getting to Mallorca by end of September where we plan to meet Mira’s family. It looks like a long time away but it is also a long way to go…
However nice the sun and the wind, the character of the trip changes when we re-realize how little drinking water we have left. The water tanks were totally empty when we left Portland and Mira had opened our last 10 L jerry can. Some new sort of fanatism gets hold of us. Frantically we started to make an inventory of all the fluids on board, including the liquid in the cans with pies, the water in the cooling system of the engine and make jokes about drinking the (oily) liquid in the compass… (about the last thing a sailor would do, to ruin his Compass). It probably has to do with Mira and I, recently reading a book on a family, which ship is sunk and that gets rescued from a life raft after 80 days eating raw turtles etc. Alltough we still have a few litres of water left, we change our behaviour and Ton experiments mushroom soup, using the juice from the can, enriched with some seawater (no additional salt needed). Unfortunately the experiment fails.
As for my self, I keep on being surprised how busy we are and how little spare time we have. We have not even played one single game of the loads of games our friends gave us to because we might be bored…. No chance! The thick book that I started reading one month ago is now almost finished. One book per month! And we have more than two meters of books to read. We have been so busy keeping the boat afloat and in good shape, with the repair jobs in Portmouth and Poole (It took us 3 days to replace the flexible coupling of the engine after the old one broke) and all the small things that needed attention…
With the last puff of wind we enter Plymouth harbour at sunset and pick up a mooring opposite to the Royal Western Yacht Club where we were last year with the Ijmuiden – Gijon race. We are happy we got further South finally and that we can await the right weather for the crossing here now. Photo of Mira practising Karate at sea (kata on the aft deck...). 