Day 31 36:37N 09:53W Winds F1-3 132nm (23hrs)

Run since noon 130nm Pos'n 36:37N 09:53W.

It was "film night" last night, "The Sentinel" with Keiffer Southerland and Michael Douglass. Watched by Justin and Louise in the saloon and listened to by Jim from the helm station as he was on watch. I went to bed early as I have done something painful to my hip and felt sleep might be the cure.



For two nights and two days we have been surrounded by our fishy friends swimming along at between 5 and 6 knots. Today they seem to be even more numerous and where we had just silver grey we also now have silver blue. It was quite disconcerting when during lunch we started hearing a muted thump every few minutes and when we looked behind the boat each one was accompanied by a patch of blood in the water. Much to the delight of the many seabirds now following us some of our fish flock are being hit by the propellers because they are running out of space under the boat! Shortly after this I saw a very large form in the water of six feet or more in length, also blue silver slowly heading away from us having I suspect also just had his lunch. When it had gone the impacts stopped so I guess the fish were all crowded in between our hulls hiding.



We are still motoring, although with the Genoa up so we are making about 6.5knots but getting through a lot of fuel. Today as we were adding yet more a 20litre diesel can fell overboard and gave us a chance to practice our man-overboard (no one had the instant whit to yell "Can overboard") drill which we had not done since I lost and recovered my hat off Bermuda.



Louise wanted to try out my Pan bread recipe and as a change added parmesan and olives which was very nice with tinned sardines and salmon. We are getting to the end of our lunchtime food stocks although have enough for the next and last couple of dinners.



I have changed tonight's watch rota so I will be on from midnight to cross the traffic separation scheme of Cabo St. Vincent at right angles to the large commercial traffic. This is about 20 miles wide so will take about four hours and at the end of it we will only be about 13 miles from land and easily able to see the lights of Europe for the first time. We will then head direct towards the straights keeping North East of the main shipping routes and trying to reach the entrance a couple of hours before high tide in Gibraltar so we can go in with the tide. The straights can in places have a current of more than 6 knots going East and 4 West so you need to time it right or you can end up going backwards although at the right time going East you can fly through. If we can't make the morning tide on the 5th then we will go in on the 11pm tide and Jim will have a mad dash to Malaga for his flight in the morning where if we make the morning tide he is planning to get there the night before. At the moment we don't have a marina berth but I am hoping Kim can arrange one tomorrow from the UK otherwise we will have to anchor at the head of the bay up towards La Linea once we have checked in, fuelled up and dropped off Jim.



I find the current in the Straights of Gibraltar quite interesting, as I remember it occurs aside from the tide because evaporation from the Mediterranean occurs three times faster than water enters the sea from its rivers so it is constantly being topped up by the Atlantic.



Right now it is 8pm and we are starting to see on our radar shipping traffic up ahead in the TSS. We will be using our bright navigation and steaming lights tonight instead of our normal masthead tricolour as we want to be seen more than we want to conserve power. We will also have white hand flares and our 5 million candlepower light to hand in case we need to attract someone's attention or for some reason come to an inglorious stop in the wrong place. As usual this will probably be lots of preparation for something that doesn't happen.



Tomorrow will be our last but one blog.



Night all