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Quirine - Log day 2, 3, 4 - sailing across the Bay of Biscay



The start at Plymouth was magnificent seeing the ARC fleet preparing itself for the crossing. A bit of manouvring and positioning attemting to be at the startline just in time. We may have been the first to pass the line after the signal - we will hear about that once in Baiona - we decided to just stick to the basic sailing plan of genua and mainsail, leaving the genaker where it was. Slightly beyond the breakwater the wind practically died down to nothing, reason to start the engine. After a few hours of motoring we were a bit surprised to pick up a nice NW3-4bft instead of the easterly wind we were expecting. This wind took over 24 hours to gradually shift to N and much later to NE were the wind would pretty much remain the rest of the trip. We were sailing along with two ARC boats but unfortunately we were unable to identify them. During the course of monday night in the area of the Brest shipping lane we lost both of them out of sight. Jan showed his cooking expertise by preparing the most exquisite meals starting with a tasteful salad on sunday. We had decided to sail towards the shipping lane of the French coast keeping the shipping lane to port to avoid interference with large freighters and tankers. We continued to keep the commercial shipping to port all the way to the Spanish coast. We maintained a policy of reefing before sunset no matter what. On Tuesday after a delicious lunch, we spotted our first school of dolfins cheering us up both on port and starboard. A pretty sight indeed. The wind treated us fairly well by remaining north easterly 4 to 5 up until Tuesday midday when it started to pick up to eventually a 6 to 7 during the course of the evening requiring us to set an additional reef in the mainsail and taking about one third of the genua away. After that Quirine was a much more at ease with the prevailing circumstances, although we offered about one knot of speed in return for safety and quietness. It is always surprising to see how quickly the sea builds up once the wind starts to pick up. It was decided to put a washboard in the companionway just to be sure to avoid unpleasant surprises. In the course of Tuesday night we decided to cross the (unmapped) shipping lanes to a waypoint close to the (mapped) Traffic separation zone off Cape Finisterre. At that time the wind turned E 5-6 bft. We saw a tanker on our path and the AIS informed us that he would pass us on 1,5nm. Hence we were surprisingly approached by this tanker by the name of Supo who raised u on ch16 to inquire regarding our preference regarding him leaving us to his starboard or port. Switching to ch6 we talked to man in charge of the tanker. At the time he was 4.NM away. We kindly requested to be left to starboard and the tanker changed course to port and so politely we followed suit. It proofed in any event that all systems worked properly, being spotted by the tanker on his AIS and being able to communicate!


Wednesday morning, on the approach of the Spanish coast in between the Traffic separation zone and the coast we suddenly got trapped by fog and by a complete lack of wind. The engine to the rescue. Somewhat later the wind turned out to be SW4, so we motor sailed in the direction of the zone to enable us to pick up the wind to sail towards Baiona. The last couple of hours we needed to motorsail since we were ready for champaign awaiting us once in port. Wereas our intention was just to get to Baionna safely, we were nevertheless proud to first having passed the start line while being first to pass the finish line as well. During the course of the day Nicole slowly but surely got hit by seasickness, although she recovered quickly once we were in port. We enjoyed a fabulous trip.



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