Trafalgar

by Paul on December 4, 2017

Rounding Tarifa point, we were out of the current and up to 8 knots, hitting 9 briefly. We were flying out of the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic. The new crew weren’t experienced so Thomas was coaching them in meticulous detail. Thomas is a fine teacher, he reminded me of things I had either forgotten or had never noticed before.

We had goose-winged the Genoa. All was going well until the seasickness kicked in. Jan clipped his safety harness on and hung his head over the side of the boat. The waves weren’t high but they were steep and short in wavelength from the stern, which made the boat roll from side to side.

There was plenty of traffic about into the night, The Straits of Gibraltar and its approaches are a funnel for cargo ships. Herbert joined me at the change of watch and I relayed as many tips and info as I could. Jan slept in for a couple of hours and Herbert fetched him at 2am. Poor guy was sick all night. I turned in at 5.20am and could hear him wretching an empty stomach for the rest of the morning.

We made good speed night and day and we were due in Lagos early afternoon, earlier than expected. We decided to head for Portimao, and anchor at the mouth of the Arade river for the night. We were still running with the wind and needed a change of course northward pretty soon. We would sail west for 7 or 8 miles and turn north transferring the Genoa to the port side to join the mainsail for a broad reach. 10 minutes later, the wind veered 30 degrees to the north, flapping the Genoa. I put 10 degrees on the autopilot and hauled the Genoa over to port for a beam reach. The new course would cut the corner of the original and we still made good speed.

4pm, we had dropped anchor behind the breakwater of the Arade River. We were the only vessel there and had the estuary to ourselves. Jan and Herbert seemed keen to get ashore. Although Pantelisa was hardly moving in the calm behind the breakwater.

We inflated the dinghy and the duo rowed ashore to Praia da Rocha. I stayed aboard with the skipper to enjoy the peace and quiet and set about making a curry for dinner.

The evening was pleasant and relaxed at anchor with the wake of the outgoing fishing boats lapping gently at our hull while sharing a curry in the warm glow of the saloon followed by a tranquil and restful night.

Weighing anchor, we only needed 6 miles to Lagos but decided it was nice enough for a sail rather than to motor for an hour. With the wind from the east, we would travel out to sea on a beam reach and gybe on broad reach into Lagos.

By 11, we were moored on the pontoon in the river near the Marina office jumping through bureaucratic hoops with a pleasant coast guard official wearing a fetching beret on his head and a shiny gun on his hip. I couldn’t see him ever using it but appearances have to be maintained I suppose.

It was a hard day in Lagos after we docked in the Marina. I envisioned myself laying back on my bunk drafting my next blog post but instead, I was scrubbing decks, sponging the condensation out of the bottom of the fridge and cleaning the floor. I discovered a drain plug in the fridge and could see a hose leading into the bilge below. I took up the floor panel to find a mini pond of stale water with mosquito larvae cheerfully swimming around. In the bottom of the bilge, there was a drain hole and Thomas prodded it with a screwdriver and the water began to drain into another compartment.

Eventually, all the holes were cleared and we drained and cleaned the bilges. A thunderstorm passed overhead and the rain washed the soap off the decks for me.

The showers were superb, I stayed under the hot spray until my fingers and toes began to wrinkle and the water started to run cool.

After a few hours ashore, Jan began to recover from his seasickness and consulted Thomas about continuing to the Canaries. It was decided Jan would abandon the trip here. The prospect of 5 or 6 days of seasickness was too much to stomach…

Herbert, Jan and I walked through the twilight to the local supermarket for the victualling. Shopping is an unpleasant task to start with. Decoding Portuguese doesn’t help one little bit. We got most of what we needed or decent substitutes and returned after darkness fallen.

Seeing as this was our first and last leg as a quartet, we went out to dinner to celebrate a perfect passage. I was famished with all the activity, as I’m sure Jan and Herbert were with their stomachs emptied.

I’d done a fair bit of writing but not much editing and I had been falling behind on the blog again. The rest of the night I spent determined to get out another blog post before setting off to the Canaries. After the evening meal, being easily influenced, I ducked into Spinnakers for a nightcap with Thomas, Herbert while Jan retreated to Pantelisa. Football commentary was barking out of the three flat screen TVs accompanied by the groans and criticisms of the handful of Brits at the bar.

In contrast, we found ourselves engrossed in conversations about psychology, ayahuasca, higher powers and other deep life subjects. Not the common topics discussed in sports bars. I’m not one for small talk but big talk like this that gets to the core of living is food for the soul which energised me for the rest of the evening.

When we got in I fired up the laptop and got stuck into the blog, feeling inspired. I finally got to sleep at 3am. First drafts are getting rougher, refinements are getting more frequent and edits take longer. This method ensures I keep on top of the details of the ever-changing adventure but means editing gets stacked up and becomes more difficult to process before publishing.

Additionally, I’d been on a month-long program called 28 days of courage, where I picked something in which I wanted a breakthrough and then committed to it for 28 days. This year it was making videos – purely because I feared public speaking and being in the limelight. There was only one aim: to make a video every day. Quality and content was not a factor. As I write, I have one more to do and since we are a few hours into Day 1 of our leg to the Canaries, setting off later today, it will be on day 2, well offshore and out of contact, by then. The knock on effect of doing these videos every day had improved my relationship with video and audio communications, live and recorded. Writing is still my favourite medium but audio and video are so much more heartfelt in personal communications.

Heavy showers continued throughout the night permeating my dreamscape by keeping me on the edge of consciousness, intensifying this other life and when I awoke, bleary-eyed, the sun was up along with the temperature.

My first mission. this morning, was to get more beer and water for the trip: heavy items that exceeded yesterdays carrying capacity of our rucksacks. I called Anna to tell her we were off and to wish her luck on her new adventures and she told me that there were currently heavy rain and storms in Gibraltar heavy enough to hide the view of the rock. I could hear the thunder down the phone above the inane piped music down aisle 7 of the supermarket.

The weather was perfect where we were and after a regretful farewell to Jan, we were soon heading southwest to Lanzarote as a trio with a lively north wind pushing us from our starboard quarter (back right, to you squire.) The Lagos dogleg was the better decision. Not only did we avoid the storm we would have had to motor through but we also benefited from good winds. Longer in miles but shorter in time and diesel.

The further we got from shore the more the wind built and higher the swells rose. Pretty soon, Herbert retreated to his cabin for relief from the rolling seas.