Baiona to Cádiz

When we actually got away from Baiona, there was little wind to speak of and so we spent the first couple of hours motoring SE (to get outside the 100metre depth  contour) and then south. Gradually the wind built so we set the full main to port with the preventer and the genoa to starboard held out with the spinnaker pole.  From that point the wind stayed with us until we rounded Cape St Vincent 312nm and 35 hours further on.

We enjoyed sundowners together in the cockpit and dinner too, which was one of the meals we had prepared in Baiona. We usually tuck a reef into the mainsail at nightfall so that should the wind build during the night, the off-watch person does not have to be disturbed to reef. However, the wind was so far below our normal reefing limits that we elected to leave the sail plan as was, reasoning that, if necessary, the watchkeeper could take some rolls in the genoa.

Our preferred off-watch bunk. Nicky is asleep, held in by the lee cloth

In the past we have worked a night watch system of a straight 3hrs on, 3hrs off but that means that the off-watch person usually gets a maximum of 2.5hrs sleep in each off-watch period with he changeover. On this passage we elected to run 3x 3hr watch/sleep periods overnight (2200-0100, 0130-0430 and 0500-0800) with the half-hour between watches allowing for the off-watch individual to be woken, get dressed and take over and for the off-going watchkeeper to fully handover etc before his/her sleep period begins. The last overnight watchkeeper makes breakfast in the morning, with lunch and dinner being prepared on an ad-hoc basis. During the day we take it in turns to sleep as required, usually with the person who had just 3hrs sleep overnight taking a couple of hours in the late morning and each of us having another hour or two in the afternoon/early evening. Though it was only a short passage, the system seems to have worked. There is enough time in the day for both sleep and chores so the overnight sleep-loser has time to get a bit more rest. Importantly, however, 3hrs in a bunk provides time for sufficient refreshing sleep at night and the 30mins between watches can be flexed to allow for more extended sail handling on watch handover as required.

Whilst on watch the log is updated hourly and our position marked on the paper chart as a back-up to the ‘electric chart’ on the GPS plotter

Dolphins visited us both day and by night    

That first night was glorious with no cloud, a good breeze (we did need to roll away some of the genoa but the mainsail remained unreefed) and amazing phosphorescence. Dolphins visited each of us on our watches, streaking through the sea like speeding wraiths with great trails of pale green phosphorescence behind them. BV left her own trail from the DuoGen and the Hydrovane rudder, and both her wake(s) and the bow wave were filled with huge sparkles as if stars had fallen from the sky.

As dawn broke on Monday the sky began to cloud over, harbinger of a front about 300 miles away to the north. It was windier too, up to 26kts so we needed to reef the mainsail and, in the process, developed a method of reefing the fully battened sail whilst maintaining our downwind course. This will be particularly important when we are sailing in areas with high swell where altering course towards the wind to reef could put the boat beam on to the swell making deck work difficult and exposing BV to potentially breaking seas.

Cabo Carvoeiro appearing in the gloom. Not the clear blue skies we had become used to at all!

Reefed down ready for the night watch

Reefed down ready for the night watch

Throughout the day the wind kept increasing until, as night fell for the second time, we put the third reef in the mainsail. Due to the cloud cover, it was a much darker night than the first one and as we closed the Portuguese coast at Cabo da Roca, just north of the entrance to the Rio Tejo which leads to Lisbon, the phosphorescence seemed to be the brightest light around. The orange line of lights on the coast looked like the very thin filling of sandwich between the black sea and the very nearly black sky. Since we were just inside a Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS), there was also more shipping around than we had seen for some time, most of it visible on AIS rather than to the naked eye. The wind was still strong and BV rushed along at 7+kts, surfing on some of the swell at over 10kts. It was exhilarating stuff and the Hydrovane coped really well, though in the relatively narrow channel between coast and TSS it was better to hand-steer to maintain a more accurate downwind course and thus avoid having to put in an additional couple of gybes to maintain our track.

Technically, we only needed to fly the Portuguese courtesy
ensign at the relatively few points on the passage when we
were within 12nm of Portugal’s coast. However, we elected
to fly it for the majority of the trip, flying the Spanish
courtesy ensign for the remainder of the time.

The overcast skies only lasted for a day and during Tuesday 2 July the weather improved and the wind dropped a little. BV still kept up a good speed though and over the first two 24hr periods we covered 153nm and 162nm. We approached Cape St Vincent at sundowners on the Tuesday, fitting the nibbles in amongst gybing and reefing as the wind, true to pilot book form, accelerated and increased in the vicinity of the headland. Once around the cape, and now on a beam reach, we put in a third reef for the night and Nicky enjoyed another brisk sail through the dark but in very warm north winds and with the air off the land smelling hotly of pine and dust.



By the end of the night the wind had dropped away to virtually nothing and it stayed pretty light and variable all day – so much for sea breezes! However, it did give us the opportunity to change our sailplan again and hoist the cruising chute. The only sailplan that we didn’t try out was the storm jib and trysail and I can’t say that bothers us too much!

Unfortunately, the wind petered out again so it was on with the ‘iron topsail’ for the final few miles into Cadiz. Since we were arriving quite late in the evening, we elected to anchor off Playa de Pontilla, a beach well-sheltered from almost all wind directions on the opposite side of the bay from Cadiz itself, and leave moving into the Puerto America Marina next to the city until the following morning. So, 75hrs and 482nm after leaving Baiona we dropped anchor off Cadiz having had a far faster and more exhilarating passage than we had expected and looking forward to visiting such a historic city over the next few days.

Finally, a short video to give you a feel of what it is like on a downwind passage: