It is past 9pm Sunday here onboard Jay Sea Dee. What a difference a day makes. The crew is settling into the watch routine nicely and managing to get the rest they need to continue on. I always find the first day the hardest as your body and mind are trying to rapidly adapt to the boat dynamic environment. Our first 24 hours out of Gibraltar we logged a respectable 165 nautical miles, with over 95% of that being under sail alone. It was a wild ride out of the straights and into the Atlantic. However the winds have backed down and we are now motoring along in some lights seas (2-4 feet).I am glad to finally put the finicky conditions of the Mediterranean behind us. There was a lot of commercial vessel traffic crisscrossing the entrance to the Gibraltar straights yesterday. At 4am I passed within a few hundred yards of a very large vessel called Super Servant 3. This vessel is a member of the Dockwise transport company (They ship your boat so you don't have to sail it for 22 days). He was heading into the Med with what looked to be just one sailing vessel on board (it could hold 20 more). I joked over the radio with the captain of that vessel, that we could hitch a ride if he had been going our way instead. The encounter reinforced my desire to do the voyaging on my own bottom. The weather forecast we procured from Commanders Weather has once again been spot on. I predict we will be making San Miguel Marina on Tenerife late Wednesday afternoon about 64 hours from now.
The crew finished off the leftovers from our Thanksgiving feast for dinner tonight. I am feeling more in the mood to work in the galley now that things have calmed down. We were visited by a lively school of dolphins this afternoon. They jumped and played off our bow for about a half hour before moving on. In honor of that treat, we watched "Le Grande Blue" on the DVD tonight. Bud tried fishing today but no joy, will try again tomorrow. We did finally cut into and sample some of the Jamon I bought in Spain. The whole leg is tied up in the corner of the cockpit.
All systems are functioning very well at this point, the hard work and preparations in Almerimar Spain the previous 2 months seem to be paying off.
More tomorrow......
At 11/27/2011 19:06 UTC saling vessel JAY SEA DEE was at 34°27.19'N 009°30.35'W sailing at 7.3 knots on a course of 225T
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