Lisbon to Madeira

Sat 14th Sept.
The winds were light westerly as we set off at two in the afternoon and the usual questions arose. How much canvas to hoist. As we were still in the lee of Cabo Roca we were not experiencing the true wind, so we cautiously put up all lowers (that's main, jib and stays'l) thinking that we could reassess in an hour or so and add either the tops'ls or even the assymetric. After that first hour as we emerged from the wind shadow of Roca the wind veered more north westerly and increased in strength to a good F5. so we handed the stays'l, the No1 jib also came down and up went the No2 jib. We also put the first reef in the main. There was a bit of a swell so the sail changing was not easy and as always on these occasions, either when busy anchoring or changing sails, my phone went. I couldn't get to it in time as I was on the helm. A minute or two later it rang again and this time I ducked below and grabbed it as Nick, Sam and John were tying the reef points.

It's a boy !!! And he's called Wilby Sol. Well done Holly and Wilby, you managed it before I lost phone signal for several days. The call was brief and soon I was back on the job of settling Holly Mae down on a course for Madeira.

The wind was steady on the quarter and the swell pretty much dead astern so we were making good progress but rolling quite a bit. A taste of things to come I was thinking. Nobody ate much that evening as the corkscrewing continued into the evening and throughout the night. But progress was good so we weren't complaining. We did three hour watches through the hours of darkness. The first overlapping with the previous watch keeper, the second on our own, and the last overlapping with the following watcher.
By 1400 the second afternoon we had covered 142M on the log. If you add to that an estimated half knot of current in our favour then we had progressed about 154 towards our destination. But during the second afternoon the wind eased a bit dropping to northerly F3 so we changed back to the No1 jib. In the evening we were visited by dolphins who stayed around for 20 mins. The swell was quite big and with the water crystal clear we could see the dolphins as they surfed down inside the waves. It was spectacular.

A few hours after the wind had decreased, the swell followed suit and so we had a quieter night. Better for sleep, although I was still finding it hard to switch off at night, and was only managing a couple of hours.

The second 24hr run was down to 107M plus current (so maybe 119). It's difficult to know what to allow for the current as it's more a result of winds than the position of the moon and sun as I'm used to at home. And because it's wind driven there are no charts showing the strengths. So an average is half a knot, but by comparing the log reading with the GPS it seemed to be varying throughout the day which I couldn't understand. Sometimes over a knot in our favour but sometimes going against us although only weakly.

By early afternoon on the 3rd day we had 240M to go and so as I was trying to arrange things for a daylight arrival we would try to adjust our speed accordingly. An average of 5K would give us a midday arrival. That was ideal because if we went faster or slower there was a good chance that we'd still arrive in daylight. But to achieve this we needed a little more speed so we shook out the reefs in the main and up went the stays'l and the tops'l.

At first progress was good through the next night but as time went on the wind became lighter and the swell was shaking the wind out of the sails and making the boom slam. These conditions grate on the nerves and made sleep very difficult again. By morning we were becalmed and for peace and quiet we dropped all sail and waited............... and waited.
The sea was a remarkable blue.

By midday we could feel the lightest of zephyrs and so it was time to try out the assymetric again. But the effect of the swell although not great was still more than the wind and we could keep the sail full no matter what we tried. After half an hour or so the constant filling and collapsing of the sail led to a small tear as it caught on the starboard spreader so down it had to come. Because of the crashing boom in these conditions we tried just headsails, jib, stays'l and jib tops'l. This seemed to work and we were underway again albeit only making 1 -2K, but after being becalmed we were encouraged. Our patience was rewarded and by mid afternoon we had enough wind to use the main and tops'l.

During my watch on the 4th night I was feeling around for my head torch on the seat beside me when I felt something wet and slimey. Next to the 'thing' was my torch and when I turned it on I saw an eye looking up at me. It was a squid !!! It must have been catapulted on board by the mainsheet dipping in the water as the boom was swinging about. Anyway it was his lucky day as I returned him to the deep.

0755 Land ahoy !!! Sam was the first to spot it and we worked out that it must be Porto Santo the smaller of the Madeiras and about 30M north east of Madeira Grande. The wind held out all morning and we approached the island from the north. We sailed around the eastern end and although we were losing the wind as we sailed around the SE corner we kept going and sailed into the harbour, only starting the motor for the las 100yds onto the reception pontoon.