October 5-6
Flies! Flies! Flies! This is the third time we have been inundated with FLIES! The first time was when we were crossing to Sines, we were sailing dead down wind, spinnaker was up, sun was out, it was warm and then all of a sudden, there were 50 or so house flies inside and on the coach roof, also lots of little fruit like flies. It took days to get rid of them all. We had them again on our way from Sines to Portimao, and then today they appeared all of a sudden when the wind died. But where are they coming from? We are about at least 30M offshore. Are these special migrating house flies? Are they hatching on the boat somewhere, this seems unlikely as Kivu has also been invaded by flies. If anyone has any ideas as to where these flies are coming from we'd love to know. The next problem though is getting rid of the things. How do you get rid of house flies, quickly without using fly spray. We arrived in Faro during a confused tide. Thank goodness for our engine as we were doing nearly 3000 revs and only making way at 4.5knts at times, which is not normal for our boat, 3000revs would normally give us about 9-10knts, when we weren't trying to enter at an ebbing tide.
Day two in Cuturan, which is the dune island off of Faro. We actually went ashore today and had a quick lunch and a walk to the Atlantic beach. Just a nice day. The highlight was a chameleon on the path on the way back. It was very windy, blowing about 26 knots at times. As long as it is not that windy tomorrow morning we will be heading to Gibraltar.
October 7th
Set off as the sun rose, hardly any wind, though we expected it to pick up later in the day as it had the previous few days, unfortunately for us it did not. We were able to fly our spinnaker for most of the late afternoon into the night, but shortly after 10pm the wind died completely and we were left with just the motor propelling us along. The highlight of our day sail was a very large pod of bottlenose dolphins visiting for a bit. When they first joined us they were bow riding about 4 dolphins deep, a pretty remarkable sight. They stayed with us for about a half hour, watching us, jumping, arguing among themselves and singing. It was wonderful! I know we all look forward to seeing more dolphins throughout our travels!
As is our routine now, John did the first watch and I went to sleep. We do not have a set amount of time for our night watches, we just wake each other up when we feel tired. So, at 12AM I was up and out and John was catching some Zzzs. When I am on night watch it generally involves making a bottle for Adam and putting him back to bed, an occasional visit from Lucy, and listening to podcasts. At the moment I am really enjoying listening to the TED talks NPR podcasts as they are both intersecting and don't require too much concentration to get a lot out of them. My guilty pleasure is of course the Archers Omnibus, and for those of you who do not know who the Archers are, it could be described as a radio farming soap opera. I have always found listening to others talk comforting, perhaps this is because it reminds me of when I was little and would borrow audio books from the library and squirl away listening to them on my Walkman in my bed when I was supposed to be sleeping. In any event, podcasts certainly help to while away the night hours. As does star gazing and phosphorescent watching.
October 8-11
We arrived about 9AM, we slowed our speed way down in the night as we did not want to go through the Straights of Gibraltar in the dark do to the large amount of container traffic. We were surprised at how industrial the Gibraltar Bay was, there were many tankers anchored, and a large refinery just on the Spanish boarder.
We are staying in the Queensway Quay Marina and it is our first experience of stern on mooring. It was very nerve wracking coming in as we had to come in stern first which is not something Dark Horse really likes to do, but John handled it all very expertly and we came in smooth and slow.
We set about exploring the town after formalities were completed. So, now to set about getting our sails from the UK delivered here as well as our wind vain and stocking up on comfort foods from the UK.
So, we have been here for four days now. We've tried to get some work done on the boat but we are finding it difficult to find people, so our idea of getting a whole bunch done before we head off to the Canaries is having to be re-evaluated. We don't have anything that desperately needs to get done but at times we do get overwhelmed with our to do list.
Aside from the jobs list we have had time to head up the Rock on the cable car, see the maracas, walk Main Street, the shopping hub of Gibraltar, and visit their new park numerous times. We've rented a car and should pick it up tomorrow morning. We plan to do a bit of camping and sight seeing away from the sea. I am particularly interested in Alhambra.
Girls are great, Adam is growing lots and has moved from being the happy go lucky guy to being happy but also frustrated that he cannot do more or do what he wants. He is crawling all over the boat now, nothing is safe, and he is cruising around the saloon. Lucy's top two front teeth are just starting to come in now and Ruth is looking forward to when she will have a wiggly tooth.
That's all for now.
Happy Thanksgiving 12 October 2014
"Get up! Get up! It's raining, close the hatches! Quick!" is what I woke up to in the wee hours of the morning. We have had our first rain in about a month and we were not prepared for it. We had left clothes outside, all the hatches were open and the weather board (our door) was not in so the rain was just pooring into the boat. But thankfully John heard it quickly and we got everything squared away before we got too soaked. I really like listening to the rain through the hull of the boat. It is a lovely meditative sound, rhythmic and soothing. Which might be why Adam slept through the night?
It rained most of the morning which meant for a very slow start. John took apart the port loo again looking for the blockage from Ruth's experimenting, but still it is not working, so he thinks it is probably the pump, which is such a shame as these loos were brand new. While John was Mr. Plumber, the kids and I went to Morrisons to get our Thanksgiving feast supplies. No turkey this year, but we did find a lovely piece of beef ready for roasting, so we had a roast beef dinner with yorkshire puddings and apple pie for desert. It was a nice dinner, I was really pleased with how well everything turned out as I cooked it all, and normally when I cook things don't go as planned, (typically dinner is a few hours late due to mis-timing or burning or just general incompetence).
Irregardless of what we eat or where we are on Thanksgiving, this holiday always brings home to me the distance that is between us and our friends and families. That is one of the biggest problems when you leave your hometown to live international; you create a sort of international family whom you think about, care about, and find yourself thinking, if only I could get everyone in the same room together just for a few hours, what incredible conversations would happen, what laughter there would be and how truly happy I would feel, and how distant and separate I feel right now. However, if I had just stayed in Halifax, never left, continued on as I was living when I was 20 years old, I would never be sitting here with my extraordinary husband and three lovely children in Gibraltar about to embark on a trans-Atlantic crossing...really I think a bit of loneliness is worth putting up with for an adventure like this.