Thursday 13th
Breakfast was a little on the late side this morning and the skipper informed us we hadn’t got sufficient time to circumnavigate the Island of Ibiza as the wind direction had changed and this meant our planned route was windless; result, engines all the way. We are here to sail so it’s an about turn and head back to where we stopped the first night. Had we not got a hotel booked for Friday night, the time elements wouldn’t have been an issue!
The weather didn’t improve and tomorrow’s weather will mean we are close hauling resulting in an uncomfortable passage and because of our hotel booking, means a 0400am start. After much deliberation we decided to stop off at Sant Antoni de Portmany to stretch our legs and have some lunch before sailing back tonight, shame but that’s the nature of sailing having to rely on the wind.
A little later than planned we arrived in Portmany but after having an excellent snack lunch there wasn’t much time left before we had to leave so cancelled our shore visit for today. Note to self, this is where the Denia ferry comes in so must make the effort sometime in the future and come over.
We hoisted anchor and left the shelter of the town at 1630hrs, hoisted the sails in the bay and headed back to Valencia, ETA 0030hrs. Once in the open sea Elton gathered speed, settled into a nice 45-degree list as the wind was coming from the south west, the perfect angle and we were cruising along between 10.5 & 11.5 knots all was well as the sun was shining, though the wind was rather on the chilly side.
As the evening approached the wind got chillier Christine and I went inside and to wile away the time we played crib but unfortunately halfway through the third game Christine was overcome by the dreaded nausea and had to make a hasty retreat, conceding the game, much to her, and my discuss. Unfortunately that was the end of Christine for the rest of the passage!!!!!!!!
Apart from the above, all was going well as we were zipping along with the Skipper making tiny adjustments to the sails all the time to coax every bit of speed from the wind, things were looking promising that we would achieve or even beat our predicted time of arrival 0030hrs, well that was then!!!!!! Soon after we passed the headland around Gandia, disaster, the wind dropped and no matter what Ollie did, so did our speed👹👹. Oh dear, back to running on engine and 7-knots ETA recalculated, arrival time around to around 0200hrs. This time the Skipper left a tight main up to steady the boat whilst under engine power and the smoothness together with a sleep, brought ChristIne back to life
Returning to our mooring was a little tricky as there wasn’t much help about when we pulled in around 0200 hrsand to make things worse the wind was pushing us off, still the skipper with his chef “turned” deckhand soon sorted things out and we berthed. I have to say very little time elapsed ‘till we were all in bed for our last night on board but 0300hrs