19th February 2019
We set off shortly after noon, with Hector sound asleep. By 15 minutes into the passage both of the older kids had crashed out, too! I don’t know if they were feeling a little seasick after we had been in a calm anchorage for a couple of weeks (there was a fair swell, so it’s entirely possible) or just needed the sleep. They’re both getting by on about 8 hours a night at present, which isn’t enough – but they wont go to bed any earlier, and both wake at dawn. Anyway, the passage…
We were hand-steering as getting hold of an autopilot belt is proving difficult. And we decided, as we were at the helm in any case, to fly a little more sail than usual in the hope of a bit of extra speed, which proved lots of fun. We had about 20 knots on average, gusting to 27 – 1 reef in the main and 1 in the jib most of the way was plenty. Probably because we were enjoying the speed so much, we didn’t sail close enough to the wind and ended up with about 2 miles more motoring-into-the-wind than we would have liked as we approached Le Marin.
Much to Arthur’s disappointment our fishing record remains terrible. He wanted a mahi mahi (he’d spoken to someone at the dinghy dock who had caught one recently), so had asked another cruiser in the chandlery to recommend a suitable lure. We trolled it the whole way, with no success. I suspect we’ll need to be more active to actually catch anything – but there’s not much chance of that while we are hand-steering!!
So, a good sail, but no fish ☹. No photos either!