Arrival at St Lucia - photos by Tim Wright

Some photos of our arrival at Rodney Bay, St Lucia on December 10, 2009 by the official ARC photographer Tim Wright.

Skylark's crew - Ed, Steve and Francois - glad to make landfall, St Lucia.

The Crossing

November 22, 2009 -  the day is finally here.  The 24^th Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) starts today.  I am writing off-line and won’t be posting on the blog until we arrive at St Lucia which lies among the Windward Islands in the Lesser Antilles.  This is a sea diary of sorts that is being kept because some highlights of the journey may be lost to occasional waves of senior moments as Skylark meanders along on her longest passage yet. 

The racing yachts in the ARC have set off  from the bay outside the marina at Las Palmas.  There are frenzied tacking duels at the start line.  With 2800 miles to go, the struggle to be first across the line must no doubt be a manifestation of pure testosterone induced machismo of the racing skippers.  No such thing with Skylark’s crew of senior citizens  -- we are content to slip by the Committee boat at our own pace.

Some of the boats starting out from Las Palmas, November 22, 2209.  We wonder for how long those spinnakers will keep flying.

The provisioning onboard has a heavy French influence.  Chef de Bateau, Francois, found the French Auchan supermarket in Las Palmas and after some massive purchases, declared it the best store on the island.

Crossing an ocean is not for the faint-hearted.  The ARC however has spawned a party/picnic atmosphere in which families with small children take to the seas aboard sailboats small and large.  Some are better prepared than others but the seaworthiness of a vessel seems mostly dictated by economics within basic safety standards set by the World Cruising Club, organizers of the ARC.

Once clear of Gran Canaria and the wind acceleration zone between the islands, the fleet settles in on a southerly course in the Atlantic swell.  It is constant motion and time is required to find one’s sea legs. Meals and watch schedules have to be settled into – the process is not instantaneous, the best laid plans notwithstanding. There is a moon out from the first night which is strangely comforting as the fleet disperses, each boat to pursue carefully conceived routing plans, some prepared by professional meteorologists and others of the similar professional persuasions.  Some of these services are available gratis off the internet, others are paid for.

Each ARC yacht is required to make a daily noon position report to Rally Control in Cowes on the Isle of Wight.  We do ours using a single sideband  radio (SSB) based email system called ‘Sailmail”.  The rig comprises a high frequency or SSB radio transceiver, a specialized modem interface and a notebook computer.  Email is slow and highly dependent on signal propagation of the radios stations situated around the world, so we are uncharacteristically economical with words. 

After just 2 days at sea, a number of boats have had to retire with gear failure or crew injuries.  They divert to the Cape Verde islands or retreat to Las Palmas. We get a fleet update on November 23 – a yacht in the Racing division, Auliana II has had rudder failure and has been abandoned with search and rescue taking the crew back to Las Palmas.  There are other reports of an abandoned fishing vessel which was posing a navigational hazard.  These are not the last of the incidents (on December 1, another yacht, Pelican, suffers rigging and engine failure and makes a Mayday call.  It too is abandoned after the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre at Falmouth directs a merchant ship to its aid.  The boat is not scuttled but is located a couple of hundred miles north of Skylark.

Food provided by divine providence,  Francois and Ed land a big one.

Sailing across the Atlantic on the trade winds route entails a mostly downwind course.  Setting up the optimum sail combinations requires some experimentation as Skylark has never been tested in such conditions – the wind from behind blowing 15 to 25 knots in constant swell and waves. 

This is a photo of our headsail (the Genoa) which has been set up for downwind sailing.  The large aluminium  pole swivels from the base of the main mast and keeps the sail in a more or less constant position relative to the wind.  It is not a piece of equipment entirely without risk in its use.  If a large wave should tip the boat sufficiently to the side on which the pole is set, it could make contact with the sea at great force and cause major damage to the fitting or worse (such as a dismasting).  We are judicious in using it and are happy to reduce the head sail when wind speeds begin to be worrisome.

Our routine settles in and we are a happy crew spending time reading the few books we were able to lug on the airplane with us.  The last of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogies is finished with great regret. Paul Theroux’s Elephanta  Suite is read with relish.  We can relate to the characters, having met a few in our own lives.  John Caldwell’s Desperate Voyage was a truly enjoyable read.  Thank you, Susan Mackay for lending it to us, along with the other books. In desperation, we start on Joseph Conrad,  but he's too depressing to read at sea -- perhaps we'll get to him when we are safe in port.

               A hard day at sea......

                                                  

Other aspects of life at sea are even more pedestrian.  There are constant checks on the battery monitor for remaining power and voltage levels.  Skylark consumes a lot of electricity while under way to maintain some semblance of normal life.  “Larry”, our trusty Furuno auto pilot and watch captain, runs 24/7 and is a glutton for power.  The navigation equipment also draws a few amps as do the electric motors that run the sail controls.  We develop a routine to run the generator three times a day, during which the battery bank gets charged, the desalinator makes water for the tank, the clothes washer is run and most important of all, the coffee machine is in operation.  Each day, at a time of his own choosing, Ed “the Engineer” Flint does a rigging check and removes the dead flying fish from around the deck .  Here’s a picture of him at work .  It’s hard to believe someone could look so happy doing such menial work after an apparently successful corporate career...

Then, there’s the very important aspect of our existence as hunter gatherers of the high seas – the search for protein to sustain life.  Francois has three strikes by apparently large fish but they got away.  The fishing lures he bought at Las Palmas were of poor quality and came apart when the fish bit. In any event, we did not starve.  The subsequent fish was of moderate size, perhaps 15 pounds, which was good for a couple of sashimi meals and some fried fish dinners. 

Ed and Francois at Skylark’s transom - the fish is clearly visible near the water's surface. 

Francois lands a fishy meal but has to work hard gutting the animal.

The days click on and we read the ARC email reports, noting positions of some boats we’d met at Las Palmas.  We are content to sail along as gentlemen, not too fast…..It seems like we are middle of the pack before adjusting for the ARC handicapping adjustment for elapsed time.  Skylark unfortunately has a handicap rating that would penalize her against the majority of boats in the fleet.  With about 5 days to go (based on course and assumed average speeds), we hear from “Fandango” who have communications problems with their Iridium email system.  We are able to talk on the VHF radio and relay their position to Rally Control in Cowes.  Apparently, they then developed a subsequent problem with their VHF antenna and could only manage very short range radio coms using a handheld radio.  Another ARC boat, Shania, shadowed them at close range and relayed messages for them.

500 miles to go with no land in sight, we get a visit from a feathered friend (believed to be an Egret headed south for the winter) who decides to stay for the night.  Offers of bits of fish are ignored.  He preferred to shelter from the wind and to rest for the onward flight to who knows where...The next morning, he flies off without so much as a thank you, other than leaving some bird poop on the cabin roof.

As St Lucia looms on the chart, it begins to feel like an anticlimax.  Was it going to be over so soon, just as we were getting used to life as permanent nomads of the oceans?  The wind came up on the final night before landfall, and we had to reduce sail to slow down so we would arrive in daylight.  Some boats that were behind us went by but we did not care too much.  St Lucia is GMT minus 4 hours.  We’d begun progressively adjusting the time towards this time zone as we made our way past mid-Atlantic.  The time was referred to as time zone ST (for Skylark Time).  The adjustment played havoc on one of the crew’s body clock (at this time, he has not been named but is believed to hail from Corpus Christi, Texas.

As dawn came, we had St Lucia on our port side.  Rounding Pigeon Island at around 7 am, Thursday, December 10, 2009, we headed for the finish line at Rodney Bay and received the appropriate congratulations from the ARC Finish Line at around 7:15 am.  We also congratulated ourselves on not having killed anyone during the 18 days at sea…Our elapsed time for the passage from Las Palmas to St Lucia totaled 17 days, 22 hours -- not bad for Skylark's first ocean crossing.  We head slowly under engine to the narrow channel leading to the Rodney Bay marina and are snug and safe at berth J10 in a small rain storm.

Now to find a decent internet café to post the blog.  More in a few days after we have had the chance to explore St Lucia.

Las Palmas

November 6, 2009 -- Skylark is at Berth 13 on Pontoon T at the marina. We connect shore power and water and the coffee machine is the first piece of vital equipment to be deployed. After a quiet meal on board, we walked the little strip fronting the marina which has some restaurants and a few ship chandlers.  The town is a little further away with supermarkets and stores.  The old town is a half hour walk from the marina with older buildings and streets closed off as pedestrian malls. Las Palmas is surprisingly large and developed as a city,  The main trade is tourism with mainly northern Europeans making an escape from the winter chill.  The ARC is a major event for the city and the waterfront is bedecked with flags and signs.  This will be the 24th ARC to start off from Gran Canaria.

 Ed cleans the galley, Skylark and dinghy at the Las Palmas marina

Monday, November 9 -- we checked in at the ARC office and are assigned a Rally number and given an appointment for the safety check on Tuesday.  Our Rally number is 69 and there are some 220 boats expected in the final tally. We get a visit by "Jerry the Rigger" who gives us a free rigging inspection, courtesy of Skylark's insurer, Admiral Insurance of the UK.  Jerry climbs both masts and makes a complete inspection of the rigging and lifelines.  As might be expected, Skylark's rigging gets a clean bill of health.  We got some practical tips from Jerry on things to look for when inspecting the rigging while at sea. Most dismastings on sailboats are avoidable if problems are detected early and promptly rectified, or if sailing tactics are changed to put less stress on the rig.

  Another shot of Skylark at the Las Palmas marina.

Our safety check went OK.  Our safety equipment meet requirements and in some instances, exceed them.  Still, we got some good suggestions from the ARC safety inspector, Paul Tetlow, especially on making ready to deploy equipment should the need arise.  We also learned some things about our equipment which we had not been aware of.  For instance, the second antenna on top of the mizzen mast is dedicated to the AIS tranceiver.  If needed, the antenna could be used as a spare for the VHF radio should its own antenna become disabled.  We had to concede however, that despite our sophisticated collision avoidance electronics, a passive radar reflector had to be carried in the unlikely event of a total loss of power while under way.  We purchased one for 30 Euro and stored it in a cockpit locker, nicely out of sight.  Our inflatable life vests had new strobe lights installed on them which automatically come on if the vests are deployed.

Sunday, November 15 was the day the ARC was declared open with government officials from Gran Canaria and St Lucia gracing the occasion.  There was a parade of sorts with crews carrying their national flags down the street to a spot near the port office.  There are boats from 30 countries participating in this year's ARC.  The "parade" is accompanied by a brass band playing tunes like "Roll Out the Barrel" and is watched by locals and other yachties lining the street.  At the end of the parade, the flags are raised on a row of flag poles while canons went off in salute.  The Malaysian flag is carried by a motley crew -- one real Malaysian, a Texan and a Frenchman (both of whom have longstanding connections to Malaysia).  Ed has lived and worked in Malaysia and is married to Jun, a Malaysian the skipper has known for almost 40 years.  Francois has spent many years in Malaysia managing civil engineering projects.  We are asked by many about the flag and where we come from.  We left the questions to Francois who would answer without a trace of self consciousness "....Malaysia!"  So here are pictures of the parade:

Finally, a photo of friends from the Amel Super Maramu, Voyageur, David and Susan MacKay who are on their second circumnavigation.

 

We have begun provisioning in earnest.  Water, drinks, breakfast supplies, etc. and a large supply of half cooked bread which can be stored without refrigeration.  They only require 10 minutes in the oven, and the result is  fresh bread as if we'd gone out to the boulangerie in the morning.  We will get meat, eggs and vegetables a couple of days prior to the start on Sunday, November 22. The second deep freezer has been started up in preparation and the food inventory updated.

The Amel technical crew from La Rochelle turned up the morning of November 16 to retrofit the rudder post assembly.  This should fix the water intrusion while under way for good.  Nicolas, who we'd met at La Rochelle during Skylark's commissioning in July, is working on the problem.

We start out across the big ocean on Sunday.  Our limited email capability via the short wave radio will be used for daily position reports to the ARC and weather reports. The next blog post will be from St Lucia in the Caribbean. For those interested, the positions of boats in the ARC fleet are updated daily on the World Cruising Club website and Skylark's position should be available on the site.  We expect the crossing to take up to 20 days, perhaps less if winds are favourable.

The adventure begins....

Have been unable to post a blog since arriving at Las Palmas due to the poor internet connection.  We normally go to the inappropriately named "Sailor's Bar" for wi-fi but the connection breaks off frequently.  The Sailor's Bar isn't quite the sleazy dive the name implies, but a friendly little cafe serving simple meals and good coffee.  The internet cafes in the inner city have more reliable connections, so here goes...

November 1, 2009 --left our berth at Marina Bay, Gibraltar at 1:40 pm.  High water at Gibraltar for today according to the tide tables is 1:41 pm.  The advice from passage planning guides is to leave Gibraltar a couple of hours after high tide and to stick on the Spanish side to take advantage of the favorable west bound current in the Strait.  We refueled at the Cepsa dock – 270 litres at only 40p per litre, a bargain compared to France where Gas Oil A sells at 1.35 Euro per litre. 

Slipped the lines at the fuel dock at 2:45 pm – with time to spare before the outgoing tide works in our favor.  It takes a while to transit the harbor,  The apparent wind is about 45 degrees off the port side. We’ll sail for a while and see how the current works for us up to Tarifa.

After some 5 hours, a 3 knot adverse current works against us, so much for the passage planning guides. With sails out, we run the engine at low RPMs to maintain about 5 knots speed over the ground.  As we pass Tarifa on the Spanish coast, the current slows to 1 knot which is a relief.

The lighthouse at Tarifa on starboard as the sun sets and we head for the traffic separation scheme on the Gibraltar Straits.  The traffic separation scheme is an imaginary 2-way highway with ships in a "keep right" pattern along the designated stretch.  It is a busy night and we are glad for the AIS to help us weave our way through the large ships under way.  The commercial ships travel at up to 18 - 19 knots, making it necessary to anticipate their course and intentions in the dark.  the picture below is a screen shot of our chart plotter, each triangle representing the AIS signal of a ship.

You can see the enlarged plot by clicking on the photo.  The red boat icon is Skylark off Tarifa, the red dotted line is our course to the next way point and the solid red line is our intended course after that way point.  The AIS information on each ship can be retrieved when we click on individual triangles and a read-out giving the ship's name, speed, course over ground, length, beam, destination, call sign, etc appears if we click on the triangles.

It is a long evening as we make way through the ships, most of whom are turning north to ports in Europe, although a few are headed in the direction of Skylark, towards ports like Casablanca, Las Palmas, Cape Town and beyond.  The moon shows itself later in the evening and we have the wind almost directly from our stern.  We motor sail for most of the night but as the wind shifts to our starboard beam at around 15 knots, we are able to sail on the Main, Genoa and Mizzen at about 6 knots for a while.

Francois prepares a meal with the jumbo sized pressure cooker he brought with him from Burgundy.

November 2 -- winds shift almost directly to stern making it difficult to maintain the course on the rhumb line under sail.  Engine on again for most of the day.

The wind picks up to 20 - 22 knots and shifts to the starboard quarter, making it possible to sail at 6 - 7 knots on just Genoa and Mizzen.  Progress is good and we may have to re-think the timing for our Las Palmas arrival, not wanting to approach an unfamiliar harbour in the dark.

The Atlantic swells are constant but not unpleasant as the waves have long periods.  The nights are cool but day time temperatures allow for shorts and t-shirts.

Ed, with gin and tonic in Skylark's cockpit.  Note rear curtain enclosure which was welcome protection from the cold and rain.

Sailing conditions are good for the next couple of days with intermittent engine runs when the winds shifted now and then. There seemed to be much shipping traffic on their way to the Canaries and other ports.  In the early hours of Wednesday morning, we saw a ship some 30 miles away bearing down directly on our course at 18 - 19 knots.  By the time it was 4 miles to our stern, we called the MSC Seattle, a large oil tanker on the VHF to ask about their intentions. The ship responded immediately and said they would alter course and pass us on our port side.  some 20 minutes later, the ship passed about half a mile t our port.  While we had our navigation lights on and visibility was good, it is always reassuring to hear from the ship and to confirm that they are aware of our presence (which should have been evident from our own AIS signal).

 By late afternoon on Thursday, the winds had built to 25 knots and we were making up to 8 knots on reduced sail even in the increased swells.  We needed to slow down as that speed would have gotten us to Las Palmas harbour in the wee hours of Friday morning.  The Genoa and Mizzen sails were reduced to tiny little triangles but Skylark still made in excess of 6 knots.  We went off the rhumbline for a while to delay our entrance to Las Palmas.  The extra distance sailed slowed our arrival at the harbour breakwater at around 7 am UTC, on Friday, November 6 -- still a little dark as skies were overcast.

The reception dock and the fuel dock at the Muelle Deportivo de Las Palmas were fully occupied newly arrived ARC boats.  We hovered around that area of the marina until approached by a marinero (dock hand) in a dinghy.  He guided us to a temporary berth alongside some very large boats and told us to wait for a berth assignment which we would get to directly prior to checking in.  An hour later, we were assigned berth T-13 where two other Amels were already docked.  One of them was Voyageur with David and Susan Mackay on board.  We'd met them in early August at Gibraltar and they recognized us immediately and even remembered our names.  Check-in was quick as we had provided the required information ahead of our arrival through the ARC organization.

The journey from Gibraltar to Las Palmas covered about 760 nautical miles.  Since leaving La Rochelle in July, Skylark has accumulated some 4000 miles under her keel. The lady is now quite experienced...

More on Las Palmas in the next post.

Gibraltar

Enroute to Gibraltar from Valencia -- Francois relaxes in the "gin and tonic" seat.

Approaching Gibraltar from the North.

Capt Ed takes Skylark into Gibraltar harbor...

The other side of the Rock with tank farm and commercial harbor in  foreground

Religion afloat... this boat anchored at La Linea near Skylark.

October 31 - Halloween at Gibraltar.  Strange as it seems, the locals are all dressed up for trick or treating.  We have provisioned Skylark and plan to leave with the tide tomorrow afternoon.  Estimating 5 days to Las Palmas where will post next blog.

Valencia!

Left Port Vell, Barcelona around 2 pm, October 24.  Conditions after turning out of the bay were good, wind 8 – 10 knots from the south, seas smooth.  We motor-sailed with genoa, staysail and main, engine at 1200 rpm, making 7 knots over the ground.

October 25 – Caught a small tuna (12 – 14  inches) at 9 am.  Francois claims morning is the time when the fish bite because they hadn’t eaten during the night, just like humans.  This theory is somewhat suspect given the night fishing that goes on around here.  Ed attests that fish in Texas don’t follow any such pattern. So, protein for the day was provided by the good Lord and celebrated with Hank Williams gospel songs from Ed’s Ipod.  Fresh sashimi for lunch prepared by the skipper and Fish Tahitian with potatoes for dinner by Francois.

Valencia

October 25 – tied up around mid-day at the fuel dock of the America’s Cup marina at Valencia (also known as Marina Real Juan Carlos I) and checked in with documentation.  The marina is a beautiful state of the art facility built for the America’s Cup defense by Team Alinghi.  There were many empy berths and it was obviously built for large yachts.  Ed docked Skylark stern to, with about 10 feet to spare on either side.  The crew rested up, caught with email and other housekeeping and ate lunch on board.  That evening, we walked to one of the beach front restaurants and had the best Paella we’d ever tasted in Spain.

October 26 – the marina was absolutely still, so we unfurled all of Skylark’s 4 sails at the dock and hosed them down to remove accumulated salt.  The decks and other hardware also got a good wash.  That afternoon, we took the Bus No. 19 to the old town centre of Valencia.  The walk to the bus stop took us past the fancy headquarters of Teams Alinghi and Prada, who will contend in the next America’s Cup races with trimarans at Dubai next year.

Valencia is a lovely old city (the third largest in Spain).  We walked the old town and its many churches and prominent medieval gate (see pictures in our next post).  No one was particularly hungry, so we sat down to drinks and a plate of fried pescaditos (white bait) at a sidewalk café by the old gate.  Back on the bus  to the marina for a late dinner on board -- Francois’ leek and potato soup and resuscitated bread from Barcelona and all turned in for an early night.

October 27 --  After provisioning with fresh vegetables, fruit and bread, we left the marina at Valencia after lunch and headed for Gibraltar about 400 miles away.  Weather was good and seas smooth.  Winds were light from the East initially.  We flew our 1000 square foot gennaker (an assymetrical cruising spinnaker) together with the mizzen for a few hours but the going was slow in 6 – 8 knots of wind.  On our rhumbline to Gibraltar, we had the wind dead  downwind making the gennaker hard to fly. We furled the sail and made do with a small genoa and mizzen sail which helped us make 8 knots on low engine revs.

October 28 – yet another tuna was caught but it was somewhat larger than the last one.  Same menu – sashimi and fish Tahitian.  We saved the head and bones which Francois plans to make a soup with.

We have developed a nice watch schedule of 2 and a half hours each.  This part of the Med has a lot of ship traffic and the night was interesting with large container ships, super tankers and coastal tramps – and an occasional cruise ship usually ablaze with lights.  Tonight we pass one named Island Escape at around 3:30 am.  All lights are on including a bunch strung atop the ship’s superstructure.  We can only conclude these cruise ships mostly carry  geriatric insomniacs lying on deck chairs and watching the moon through the night.

October 29  --  we are making good speed and should be at Gibraltar before nightfall – a bit faster than anticipated thanks to smooth seas and favorable currents.

October 29, 6 pm -- at Gibraltar but the marinas are full.  We consulted the Med Pilot (a publication giving details of harbors in the area) and found an anchorage marked just adjacent to the Gibraltar airport runway.  Anchor was set at about 5 metres depth.  We were preparing to setlle down to clean up and prepare for dinner when we were visited by a Police boat.  The men in blue told us very nicely that we were in a restricted area and had to move.  Our Pilot was apparently out of date and we were informed that free anchoring in that area had ended 3 years ago.  We hauled the anchor and made for the other side of a sea wall designated "La Linea" or The Line on the Spanish side.  There were many large sailboats anchored, obviously turned away by the marinas just like us.  It was a well protected anchorage and quite comfortable during the night.  Ed set the anchor alarm on his handheld GPS which kept going off during the night, probably due to lack of accuracy in the little unit. Skylark's anchor held very well in the sand and gravel bottom of the bay.

Friday, October 30 -- morning came and a number of boats had already moved off.  Ed and I motored to the marina in the dinghy for immigration and customs formalities.  At the marina, we found that a berth had become available. Back to Skylark, anchor up and safely berthed by 11 am. There are many boats at the marina headed for Las Palmas in the Canaries, probably like us, to participate in the ARC. Washing, provisioning and internet were the order of the day. We were glad for water supply from the marina as harbor water was too polluted to run the desalinator.

More pictures

Skylark at the Marina Port Vell, Barcelona

Francois -- hard at work enroute to Valencia

Blue skies and fair winds -- Barcelona to Valencia

A fish from the Med -- would have looked bigger if the angle were right and if we could find a way to rotate the picture...

Spectacular Mediterranean sunset enroute to Valencia

Valencia

Above -- pictures from Barcelona,  Christopher Columbus pole-sitting at La Rambla, the Gaudi cathedral (Sagreda Familia), shop on La Rambla with familiar name, street performers at Port Vell (dog performs too...)

October 24 -- Left Barcelona at 2 pm.  After turning the corner from the harbor, wind was from the South at 8 - 10 knots.  Good motor sailing conditions on low engine revs, able to sustain 7+ knots over the ground.  Night conditions were good with more ship traffic than we'd seen in a while. Both Barcelona and Valencia are major commercial ports.  The AIS transceiver was handy especially in the dark. At around 3 am october 25, we were on a head on course with a cargo ship about 6 miles away.  The ship was making 15 knots and we were going at 7.5 knots.  We turned 2 degrees to starboard.  After a couple of minutes, the other ship apparently observing our course change on their AIS, turned about 2 degrees to their starboard and we passed nicely port-to-port without making any radio contact. We are true believers in this technology.
October 25, 0900 hrs, 39 degrees 37.99 minutes North, 0 degrees 4.7 minutes West -- the exact spot where Francois caught a small tuna (30 - 35 cm) which was promptly gutted and put into the fridge.

Skylark arrived at Valencia's America's Cup Marina around noon.  It is a big, modern marina with wide berths and the Valencia F-1 circuit running around it. It has also been home to the America's Cup races since Allighi won the cup.  Ed executed the stern to docking with little trouble. It has been decided that from time to time, the crew are going to practice berthing the boat to ensure all on board develop some level of comfort manipulating the big boat at the marinas we will be visiting.

After formalities at the marina office, we ate our tuna sashimi style and as a Tahitian dish prepared by Francois, withe the aid of a French cookbook.  Both tasted wonderful. The afternoon was spent with the usual maintenance and cleaning chores.  The marina has a good wi-fi signal that is stable onboard.  So,here we are, making posts to the blog in the relative luxury of Skylark's nav station rather than a seedy internet cafe populated by tatoo'd youths intent on some gaming contest with unseen opponents.

Barcelona revisited

Skylark -- up  against the sea wall at Palamos

Darkening skies over Palamos - onset of 2 days of high winds

Ed -- the fashionista, safe in port at Palamos, hot tea in hand.

Left Toulon in the afternoon on Sunday, October 18.  The forecast was for moderate weather in the Golfe du Lion with winds around 15 knots from the West.  Our faith in weather forecasts may have been misplaced.  as the afternoon wore on towards dusk, the seas heaved as winds were holding at 30 - 35 knots and gusting to 40 knots. Waves with short periods reached 5 to 6 metres. The Force 7 (Beaufort scale) continued through the night. We used the apparent wind direction indicator to judge the angle of the waves in the dark.  For the most part, it worked well, although the steep seas and short wave periods made it uncomfortable.  Francois had a bad case of the Mal de Mer and suffered through the pounding for the next 15 hours or so.  The next morning, winds had moderated to 25 knots and things seemed not quite so bad.  Then Meteo France (the French meteorological service) issued a "special" report which almost seemed like a tacit admission that the week's forecast was way off mark.  Winds were again forecast to build towards evening back to Force 7 - 8.  We were about abeam the Spanish town of Palamos and decided to duck in for the night.  We called on the VHF radio at about 5:30 pm and the lady at the marina told us we could have a berth for the night.  We got in around 9 pm, October 19.  The security guard was waiting for us at our "berth"  -- the last remaining space along the concrete seawall. We had to use most of our fenders to prevent the boat from scraping against the rough concrete wall.   The wind continued to build to 25 - 30 knots in the harbor.  We were thankful for the protection of the seawall. The high winds continued from the South for the next 2 days, so we stayed on at Palamos, enjoying the quiet little town with fresh bread and fruit and other produce. A few sailboats came in during that time looking for refuge from the storm but were turned away.  On desperate skipper tied his boat outside the marina seawall, exposed to significant wind and swell.  The winds finally began to moderate and we left Palamos around 6 am on October 22 to make Barcelona (60 miles away) in daylight

Afternoon of October 22 -- Skylark is at the Marina Port Vell in Barcelona again.  We arrived in a rain storm in the late afternoon.  The trip was short and uneventful, other than having the wind smack on the nose and fairly steep swells from the gales that blew for the few days prior in the Golfe Du Lion and regions west of it.  Though substantial, the swells were well spaced and Skylark rode over them with a gentle up and down motion.  Some ship traffic as well as fishing boats, attested to the improved weather conditions. By mid-afternoon however, we were in a heavy rain storm with poor visibility.  The breakwater for the harbor at Barcelona was visible only from about a mile out together with hazy outlines of major structures at Barceloneta and the Olympic port.  We made the now familiar entrance to the harbor, past the fishing and commercial ports, cruise terminals and dockyards to the marina at Port Vell.  The marina was crowded with very large sailing and motor yachts and the fuel dock was occupied at each end by a large motor yacht and a large (and wide) sailing catamaran.  With bow lines sticking out, it made available space at the fuel dock very restricted.  Generous use of Skylark's bow thruster was required to position alongside for a load of Gasoleo A.  The fuel dock and marina office greeted us like long lost friends.  The marinero at the fuel dock recognized Ed and I from our visit in late August and enquired about our third crew member (Francois).  The office checked us in using data they already had and let us know that they'd very kindly let us have the very last berth available at the marina.  There was a lot of radio traffic on the VHF indicating arrivals of super yachts that obviously were being singled out for special treatment.
We settled in to lunch on board. The marina office were unable to connect us to the shore power outlet on the pontoon due to the heavy rain which continued till the late evening.  By then, there was no one around to wire up the special adapter for the power line.  So, a night with no shore power meant no washer/dryer operation unless we started the generator.  We did start the genset for about 15 minutes -- but only to power up the Nespresso machine just to ensure the right priorities were being observed.

Dinner at a nearby restaurant was very good with friendly and efficient wait staff. We got back to the boat and turned in early to catch up on sleep. On the way back, Ed got his mobile phone, wallet and everything else wet.  How this happened is the subject of a story that may some day be told but we'd agreed among the three of us that "what happens in Barcelona stays in Barcelona...."

October 23 -- blue skies and sunshine and electricity from the shore.  Much cleaning, washing and drying -- foul weather gear, shoes, clothes decorated every available horizontal line on deck while the dryer churned on below deck.  We walked to the Cathedral which had scaffolding on some parts as it was undergoing repairs.  Then a long walk to the yet unfinished cathedral by Gaudi -- an impressive sight from the outside.  The line to go in wound around for a couple of blocks.  We admired the unconventional and complex gothic structure from the outside and then decided it wasn't worth the 2 hour wait to get in.  Got into the metro and headed to the mercado at La Rambla for a lunch of grilled seafood.
Back at the boat after a visit to an internet cafe for email and news, more housekeeping work.  Dinner on board prepared by Francois was a relief from eating outside food.  This evening, I am at another internet cafe with the others -- on our way to an Italian gelato shop.
We head for Valencia tomorrow and then on to Gibraltar.  Will post Barcelona pictures in due course.