Gently :-)

Sunday Oct. 2. - 12:00 hrs - Position 45º16.695N/007º15.557W, about 120 nm to go.

Sailing into Biscay is always said to be tricky. That might be very true but so far the the weather is magnificent. With a gentle breeze and a very gentle sea state we're having a gorgeous crossing.


We have crossed the deep water line and are now on the Atlantic.

We picked up a small bird around Brest I guess. That had to stay with us because we were too far from land for it to fly back. At one time it came to sit on Rutger's head and of course it didn't only sit but shit, too :-). It was a little bird so the dropping was small. Unfortunately, the stress must have been too much. It went to sleep last night under the spray-hood but Andy found it dead later :-(

Yesterday we had a lot of fuzz going on with a may day relay. There was a lot of talking over the radio and the distress signal went off a few times. Although we were in international waters, they only spoke French

over the radio. We had no clue at all, no position was given, whatsoever. Anyway, there were a lot of vessels in the AIS so I figured the rescue operation would not need our assistance. I guess we were too far away anyway, because I heard them talking about a cell phone number of the vessel in distress, so they had to be close to shore.

Later that day Rutger spotted a whale. We could see the spray of water a couple of times and it's back coming slightly out of the water. That was great. We tried to film it, but that didn't work out and it only lasted

for a few minutes. Too bad for Andy he was asleep ...

Last night was fantastic. We did about 6 kt over ground with 9 kt wind; it was not cold at all, and the sky was full of stars. The only light pollution came from our tricolor. 4 times I saw a shooting star, not just vaguely but like you see in the movies - right in the direction I was looking. So I made a wish: that everything would just continue as it was right now.... it was just perfect :-)

We have had no luck with fishing so far - all we caught is sea weed... The line obviously wasn't set tight enough when we put it out, so without us noticing it, the whole reel, about a mile, rolled out.  It took us quite a while to get it all in again...

Anyway, if the winds stays like this, we will do the whole trip from Brighton to La Coruña in just one
- port!! -  tack. That would be quite unique :-)