18) Ibiza, Spain

39° 01.386N 001°09.084E, 3 nm northwest of Ibiza, Islas Baleares, Spain

John made coffee and I made pancakes.  I sat my happy ass down in the cockpit and had my first meal since chorizo and eggs yesterday morning in port.  I snacked yesterday while underway and skipped lunch and dinner as nothing was going to happen in the galley.  John and I looked around inside/outside the cockpit this morning and laughed at what we saw.  Sunflower seed shells all over.  Officially, he and I are hung-over this morning from birdseed!  It was so rough yesterday that it was everyone for themselves regarding food.  I found the birdseed late in the afternoon and ate them through sunset.  Well, John is a junkie too and he polished the bag sometime late last night.  It was a 250g bag and it looked about 1/4lb.   Below was the view out the galley porthole of Ibiza at sunrise while making breakfast.

 

I came on watch again at 6:30am this dark morning.  First step out of bed and a very strong gust of wind hit the boat.  Alan in the cockpit said it showed 45kts on the digital wind gauge and then quickly went back to 10-12kts.  We heeled over, heard the wind through the shrouds and then the clouds let loose with the rain.  That must have been the gust front associated with a cloudburst.  It rained for the next couple hours while I was in the cockpit.  It was pretty cold and miserable.  Even though the cockpit is enclosed there are areas where the rain can get through.  The back panels were off and when the wind changed directions it started coming in from there, too.  The lightning off to starboard was once again spectacular.  Unfortunately, we are sitting ducks for lightning and pretty much play the odds game.  There was no way we were going to go around it, as we couldn’t see it due to the darkness.  It went directly over us and when the lightning flashed the thunder occurred within a split second.  Individual cells were all around us for most of the day.

                  

Alan briefly came out of his funk this morning.  John is reading in the cockpit.  We just put out the cheapest lure on a fishing pole for the first time since we left Rome.  It’s only been out there for about an hour and we got a bite.  We just pulled in a small 14” tuna and tuna is on the menu!

                                     

Soon after the late morning fishing the wind and seas built up.  We were pretty tired of this crap.  We decided to go to Alicante, Spain and predicted arriving after mid-night.  I stayed in the cockpit until 9pm and then left it to John.  Once the sun had gone down we were very near the shipping lane that is near this part of Spain.  It got very busy with freighters and we were on the ball.  After watching several cross our path at a large distance one off to port became a factor that we had to deal with.  It had the classic two white lights with one over the other signifying a vessel larger than 50 meters.  We knew we were going to cross its bow but just did not know when or where.  We had to make a move.  We decided to turn right and go across the shipping lane we knew he was going to transit and hope we made the right decision.  After the turn we sat and watched and watched and watched.  Nothing was happening with the two lights.  I was waiting to see a red or green light.  Finally, after it got closer to us we saw the green light and we knew that we had not crossed its bow and that was still not good.  Once I saw the green light and the two white lights lined up vertically I knew we were directly in front of the ship.  A huge sigh of relief occurred when a red light appeared.  That meant that we had crossed the bow and were on its port side.  He would cross our path behind us.  With an almost full moon we were able to make out more detail when it passed behind us.  Yes, it was a large freighter but not the container kind.  Around 9:30pm John came rushing up to the cockpit to take my picture just as we crossed into the western hemisphere from the eastern hemisphere.   

  

I went off to bed.  I was trying to get some sleep before we made port.  I knew that we would have to find a slip in the early morning hours and tie-up.  That’s always an issue with a boat.  Sometime during this sleep I had to close my windows because it started raining.  I was hoping that enough rain would fall to wash all the peanut shells off the deck that John and I consumed into the evening.  Hmm, sunflower seeds, French bread and water for dinner one night and peanuts the next night.  This is not the image of the Med that I had in mind.

That little sliding lock keeps the beer cold and the other stuff inside.  During and after a passage you must open carefully and catch everything that falls out.