Last night had to be one of the coldest nights ever. Neither Aannsha or I could
get much sleep it was so cold. We were under a doona and sharing body heat
but it's didn't, that didn't seem to help. I actually slept in my beanie and my
hoodie last night! So we yesterday we passed our first aid course and got our
certificates and the day before that we passed our VHF radio handling course.
Our licenses will get to us within the next six weeks or so and today is Monday,
which means we begin the first day of our competent crew course. Really
looking forward to it. Literally learning the ropes. But now it's just before 8
o'clock in the morning, I've been to the loo and just about to get back on board and
get some breakfast before we get whipped into shape at 9 o'clock.
This is Dan, he's also doing competent crew. Hello.
And there's our skipper, Mareike, she's gonna whip us into shape.
Barry, Dan and I spent the morning being taught all about the yacht and how
things work and by the afternoon we were out sailing in Gibraltar Bay. We're geared
up and prepped ready for our first sail. How's it feeling guys? Good to go?
(thumbs up all round) Alright let's do it.
So now it's 8.20 in the morning and before we get sailing we've got to
prep the boat and one of those things is to take all the rubbish out, so I'm
just heading up the pier to throw this rubbish away. It doesn't look it from
what you're seeing on the camera, but it's freezing and there's quite a gusty
wind blowing and that wind really bites into you. So sailing is not all
sunshine and cocktails, in the wintertime, where we are at the moment, it's pretty
damn cold. I think most of this wind, I don't even know where north and south is
at the moment, but I think most of this wind is coming off something that's
coming down the Atlantic from the north and bringing a lot of cold with it.
So today we're going to prep the boat, relearn our rope and knot-tying skills
because we weren't very good yesterday, and then we're going to head out to
either a place, a Spanish port in Morocco or further up the coast of Spain to a
different marina up north. Personally I hope we're headed south, for obvious reasons.
Barry's wishful thinking didn't pan out the way he hoped and based
on the wind direction our skipper Mareika decided we would head north
to La Duquesa, one of the Costa del Sol's best marinas on the southern
Spanish coast. It was a great day for sailing and everyone got the
chance to take turns at the helm. We were even joined by a pod of common
dolphins for part of our journey.
We arrived into La Duquesa just on sunset, put the boat to bed and went out
for a cold beer or two. La Duquesa is a very pretty marina and
it's easy to see why it's considered one of Spain's best.
Wednesday morning, we're in Spain in La Duquesa and we're just about to prep
the boat ready for a fairly long sail, we're going across to the northern part
of Africa to another Spanish colony called sector, sweater, sweeter something
like that. Little bit chilly this morning but we've all been and had our showers
because apparently the facilities on the other side of the water are not as
good as these. So we did some last-minute cleaning of ourselves,
we've got to prep the boat now and get out. There's probably going to be quite
light winds today and maybe a little bit of rain and certainly it's cold, my fingers
are freezing so if there's a little bit of camera shake that's why. The next day
as we left La Duquesa behind us the wind and weather forecasts proved correct. No
wind, cold temperatures and rain thrown in for good measure. But we did have
mugs of hot tea!
What you doing today Baz? Well today we're motor sailing. Oh why is that?
Because there's no wind and this is probably the longest passage we're gonna go on.
There's just got no wind at all. But we had wind yesterday. Yes we did have wind
yesterday. Yesterday was fabulou,s today we're praying for wind. We did our week
of competent crew and we got our certificates. We are competent now!
At least someone thinks we're competent. Right now we've got four days back on
land in the classroom where we do our theory for day skipper. As you can
probably tell we're looking pretty freakin knackered.
It's very, it's been hard. It's challenging yeah. Yeah it is but it's
been worth it and you know it was actually really good in a lot of ways,
it's just challenging on all levels. You know that's, I think that's when you're
on, that's when you feel alive and that's when you get a really good sense of
achievement when you actually get to the other end. So true yeah. Yeah so we've
just bought ourselves some fizzy water for the next (and a coffee) how many hours
in the classroom. Four days now in the classroom and then five days back on the
boat doing competent crew... No Day Skipper.
and then we're actually halfway through what we've got to do.
Our crew mate Dan headed back to England and we went into the classroom
to learn Day Skipper theory alongside our new crew mates Ryan and Colum. Next
time on Sailing A B Sea we're out of the classroom after four days of Day Skipper
theory and back on board Rockefeller for our five days of Day Skipper practical.
If you want to be notified when our next video is out click on the subscribe
button and click the bell icon. Thanks for watching.
No comments:
Post a Comment