Back to sea

Liz Wardley trail blazes across the Bay of Biscay

On Saturday, Liz Wardley resumed her Around-the-world Reference Tour of the SolOceans - OceanoScientific® Campaign 2009-2010 aboard the SolOceans One Design.

Thanks to a northeasterly 15-30 knot wind, Wardley has quickly crossed the Bay of Biscay making 360 nautical miles on her first day at an 18 knot average speed on Sunday morning.

On her first night at sea, Wardley wisely decided not to keep her spinnaker up when the wind was over 30 knots even though the SolOceans One-design could have coped with this. She also slowed down when rounding Cape Finisterre as the state of the sea was 'horrible', with many cargo ships in the vicinity - all that in a 30-knot wind.

In a good spirits, today Wardley has been preparing for two successive storms off Portugal due tonight, when the forecast indicates she will be facing 45-60 knot winds.

On Sunday evening, Liz Wardley sent us a description of her first hours back on board:

"I started off the East cardinal buoy Linuen at the entrance to the bay of Port-La-Forêt last Saturday at 1200 UTC. There was 15 knots of NEasterly breeze, a bright sunny day without a cloud in the sky. It was cold, but picture perfect, the visibility was great so I had a spectacular sail spinnaker through the Glenan and Mouton Islands with the wind increasing and dolphins jumping along beside me. It was quite an emotional depart as I could see Loctudy (where I live) and it was really like leaving home this time.

"Throughout the afternoon and the evening the wind continued to increase and I continued to sail VMG downwind. Taking a reef as I saw 25 knots and then dropping the spinnaker when I saw 30 knots. The boat felt good and we were making great progress towards Cape Finisterre. It seems I dropped the kite at the right time as shortly after I had 30 - 35 knots gusting up to 38 knots. The boat was hooning along so I took a second reef and settled in for the night with the Solent up front. We hit regularly high teen numbers and highest speed last night was 20 knots.

"It was a fast way to start my voyage, the night was really dark and thankfully there was very little traffic so I managed to curl up in my beanbag and get some good naps in. Early morning as I approached the Spanish coast the wind started getting very irregular with 20° wind shifts and gusts up to 40 knots so a rolled the Solent and unrolled the staysail and started considering a gybe - I decided to wait until daybreak to do my first '+30knots of wind' gybe and that was a mistake because I ended up going over the shelf and into shallower water and the sea state was horrible.... I survived my gybe and nothing went flying so that’s a good sign and shortly after the wind eased down a little and became more stable so I unrolled the Solent again and here I am - heading west and just got thru the last of the shipping lane off Cape Finisterre.

"I will gybe in at about 22h00 UTC tonight to start my dive SW in search of the warm water and sun... I just spoke to a cargo ship and I had to tell him 3 times before he believed me that I was sailing to New Zealand solo - he thought I had been smoking something funny...

"I am feeling pretty good, I am leaving land behind me and my sea legs are coming back - this morning was pretty hard emotionally but I went and drove for an hour to blow out the cobwebs. I am taking it easy until my gybe south as I still have a pretty big seaway, should be able to accelerate down the Portuguese coast in the next 24 hours. It is always a big hurdle to get past Cape Finisterre. Alrighty, that’s about it for now. Cheers. Liz"