One Less Plane

About an hour after I posted the blog entry from Portugal gushing about the lovely warm breezyness, winter suddenly hit Portugal! It was rainy, extremely windy and actually a bit cold – so, to my shock, out came the scarf and woolly jumpers again. So, instead of hitting the beach I went with a couple of my fellow sailors up to the incredibly dramatic ‘furthest Western point in Europe’, which is half way up a mountain and on a scarily high cliff, is the windiest place I have ever been, and was a brilliant poignant moment for me on my trip, as I could gaze epically out across the Atlantic, and picture me on a tiny boat heading for the other side, 2700 nautical miles away! The ocean looked really quite big up there and as if it was boiling up, with huge swells out at sea, and then where it hits land – a few hundred metres of white froth coming out from the shore from the enormous waves crashing on the cliffs. Breathtaking, scary and exciting!

Anyway enough of my wistful gushing like I’m in an epic film or something. After waiting a few days for the winds to die down a little and to blow in the right direction, we finally left Lisbon on Friday 7^th November. Some clever analysing of weather patterns by our skipper Bjorn, meant that we avoided some horrible wet gales further down the coast of Portugal (which many the other boats doing the same trip got caught in), and instead we headed towards Madeira and then headed South to the Canaries, and we really did do just about that – we only changed direction once (I don’t know if anyone else would find this funny, but I did, I suppose it’s just I’m comparing it to the only other navigating do – cycling round Leicester – usually changing direction every 100 metres!). This route meant that we had three days of pure, exhilarating, engine free, sailing!!

Every morning (after my sunrise watch shift – 4am – 8am), we said ´Morgan Capitain!’ as Bjorn appeared from his cabin. I shared my watches with Eric, another Norweigen who usually sails round the fjords, and the other member of the crew was Aud, captainś wife, the single most tidy and organised person i have ever met in my life. I was sick again, for the first three days, which was just horrible, again, and unexpected as i thought i got my sea legs, but it seems that in the 5 days i was on land on Portugal, my brain and inner ear forgot all that it had learnt on the first leg. ANd i take back any credit that i gave Stugeron the sea sickness drug, as all it did was make me sleepy and sick, rather than awake and sick. After all the luscious citrus fruit in Portugal, with the sickness i started to crave plain homely food like stewed bramley apples and marmite on toast, but i made do with the abundant stocks of Rivita instead. However, i am feeling more confident about dealing with sea sickness now – i know it will last for just three days, and i just have to be able to lie down most of the time, but i am still able to do my watches. On this luxurious boat this was no problem at all as the cockpit had a cosy tent-like cover, cusions, pillows and blankets for the night watch, and Eric and i took it in turns to have little snoozes. The disadvatage of the cover is that you can´t see the stars so well, so i got bored much quicker, and it meant it was harder to play the old favourite game from the other boat – count the shooting stars.

So one of the things i learnt from that boat is just how BORING long passages can be! The day time is fine – you can read, write, chat, make food, watch the waves, look for whales, dolphins, birds, look at the clouds, steer, play games. In the night, unless it is a beautiful full moon, you can´t do anything that involves light for any length of time as this uses to much battery power and is bad for eyes, you can´t see the sea or the clouds, you can´t spot dolphins, it´s hard to keep conversation and word games going for 8 hours a night every night (if you even have a watch mate), and if you do have a watch mate who isn´t really into singing then singing is sort of out of the question (quite specific to my situation that one!)! Star gazing is wonderful, but doesn’t really occupy 8 hours a night…

So, any advice on that conundrum – please do e-mail: what can you do to occupy your brain, without having to see or make any noise? I´m thinking about getting some audio books – stories and learning Spanish – i can play them on my wind-up MP3 player.

I managed to cook up a tasty vegan feast on the last night of that trip – bean, pea and mushroom fritters, with carrot and sunflower seeds salad and other salady things. I think i managed to satisfy and even please these very fishy Norweigens! Other foody news – You will see from the photos that i introduced to atleast one boat the plastic bottle bean sprouter (as invented by Bicycologist Dan for sprout loving cyclists on the move), and in fact introduced sprouts, and in FACT introduced the idea of another variety of bean to the baked bean.

Actually – another request – especially from vegan sailors (i know atleast a couple!), any ideas for very simple but tasty and filling food for around 4 people, using one gas burner and not much space, and maybe an oven, and not lots of fresh ingredients.

Arrival in Gran Canaria was very very excting, we had just spotted land before the sun went down, then as the sunlight faded, the lights from Las Palmas looked really bright and it felt like we were really close, everyone came up on deck, Abba Greatest Hits was turned up full volume,  and much  buzzing around the  navigation instruments, but by the time Abba had sung us their last tune, the lights looked pretty much the same, and it took another 2 hours before we actually hit land, so it was a bit of an amusing anti-climax!