Our Big Adventure Begins by Lochlann

Passage Falmouth to Bayona, Spain September 2014

When we finally sailed out of Falmouth with intentions of crossing the Bay of Biscay I was as excited as excitement can be. We sailed past Lizard Point with compass course of 200 degrees. We put our Walkers Log out for the first time to measure how far we had gone and how fast we were going. For the first time Fin and I took some seasickness tablets and they worked! Big surprise, but I still felt queasy. At 8 o’clock I came on watch and for 2 hours sat and made sure the self steering was working and watched for ships on the horizon. I went down below at 10 and had some food before bed at 11.

Lochlann 'on watch'

I woke up in the morning and went up on deck and saw… Nothing!!!

There was nothing on the horizon except clouds.

The sea was a deep but distinct blue, and if you looked straight down there was a great blank nothingness. A school of four dolphins came and said hello. With them they had a mother and baby which looked exactly like a normal dolphin only shortened a couple of feet. We had a perfect wind all day but that evening I had the 7 until 9pm watch instead of the 8 until 10.

At the middle of the next day we saw some pilot whales about a hundred metres away but they didn’t come to say hello. After that we saw some sei whales off the port bow, which were enormous!!!!!!

That night we heard a whale singing even though we could not see it, a soft faraway moan that spread across the water like olive oil.

Pilot whales - we think

The days seemed to spread into each other and we had no idea what day it was.

One day a small bird landed on deck looking very tired and bedraggled. It was too tired to be afraid of us and I took several good pictures of it. When dad was on watch it sat on his knee for ten minutes before mum accidentally scared it away. It then landed on Fin’s head but flew off before we could photograph it.

"The bird' Maybe a type of Warbler

That night the weather became worse and the bird tried to come down below to keep warm. We caught it in a plastic basket and put in seeds and water for the night. After that, another bird landed on deck looking a lot less tired. The one in the basket died during the night and the one on deck died the next day.

It was very rough and I felt very seasick so mum let me lie in her bunk and watch films.

It is very strange to go through things pretty much exactly the same way, day after day after day. I suppose that is why the days merged together. We finished the Bay of Biscay cake and made a Cape Finisterre cake.

We hit a dead calm and put the engine on for a couple of hours, which we all hated. We changed our plan and our course to head for Bayona, just north of Portugal.

Arriving at Bayona, NW Spain

Fin and I did some animation and I made a walking duck on 50 pieces of paper   (I need more). Nearing land we hit a thick fog and sailed neatly into the middle of a large group of fishing boats. Mum let me hoot the foghorn until I went to bed.

Early, on the 10^th September, our 9th day adrift, we made our first landfall at Bayona. Yeehaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!

We had ‘defeated’ Biscay...What next?

Water baby with Pooh boat. Quote “Sometimes it’s a boat and sometimes it’s more of an accident" 

Walkers Log

Morph on Island Swift

Woebegon rabbit