Bouwe Bekking writes...

From on board Telefonica blue....a blocked dunny in the Strait of Gibraltar

Had another beautiful day yesterday. The last couple of miles into the Strait of Gibraltar was just text book sailing, flat water, sunny skies and an increasing breeze.

We had some fun with a couple of cruising boats, who were sailing dead downwind, and we came screaming passed them sailing our angles. The cameras were flashing. Just before the Bay of Gibraltar, played cruising boat as well, sailing goose winged with our gennaker. The Spanish have a real funny term for this, and directly translated into English they would call it sailing donkey-ears. I decided to do our rudder bearing check in the Bay of Gibraltar, and we dove deep into the bay, where we picked an anchor buoy up. Two guys went in the water and inspected the bearing. There was a bit of damage but no concern, so the rudder was put back in.

This type of boats draw attention and a couple of minutes after we arrived a small tender came over to us. They looked if they walked out of a tropical film set. The two kids looked spitting images of their father, long blond hair and super bronzed. After a few words exchanged in English, I picked up they were from my cloggy land, the Netherlands, so starting speaking in my native language. All smiles. Had a nice chat with them, they were on their way back home after a trip of three years around the world, as the kids had to go to a real school… And they were not looking forward to it.

In my opinion these kids will have experienced something what will be hugely helpful in
their further life. I can see a similar thing with my own daughter. She has experienced many different cultures and clicks with them quickly. She knows a lot about what’s going on in the world and besides that speaking already very good English. These kids were no different, and I could see how happy they were. They went back to their boat and we both sailed out of the bay, but in opposite directions.

As well we had a little tribunal onboard, as the somewhere during the hours of darkness one of the crewmembers had blocked the toilet. I don’t mind that somebody blocks the shitter, but I hate it when nobody puts his hand up and admits this. I have had some bad experiences with toilets myself, and therefore hang over the transom wire to do my
business whenever possible. I have got my suspicions… but no hard prooof (yet). So 36 hours after, the toilet is still blocked and now some have to go in front of the other, what won’t be easy, so not impossible for some.

Since we split yesterday with the Telefónica black it is a bit lonely out here. But we had enough other things to look at last night. Plenty of thunderstorms around us, with mainly huge lightning’s and not too much thunder. The breeze was all over the show, changing 120 degrees of direction and varying a lot in strength, so lots of sail changes. Now finally we have cleared the messy breeze and are sailing in good breeze, but upwind!

We expect to finish our 2,000 mile sometimes on the 16th, not a very fast in average, but we have seen all the conditions we were looking for. Time to catch some sleep!

Cheers,

Bouwe