Tuesday 10th April

At Sea

We began the day with a couple of small chores, Gerry cleaned the marks off the side of the boat where the travel lift slings had been, whilst I did a general tidy up and made the bed. We had a late breakfast, made some water and then just as we were getting ready to go for a swim Lorie called to see if we wanted to go ashore with Dale, her, Scott and Heather further along the island. We all dinked around the bay and beached the dink at a small sandy beach which had a sort of pathway leading up a huge sand dune. Gerry made his way to the top of the dune which was very steep and called out from the top that this was the path way. We all began to follow, it was a case of one step forward and slide three backwards unless you crab walked from side to side. The rest made it to the top but I gave up - I didn’t think it was worth the effort and it was hurting my knee which doesn’t need to be causing me any more pain than it already does. The trip back down was like skiing, except on sand. Gerry joined me as he didn’t want to walk to the beach on the other side and we both went for a swim in refreshingly cool clear water. The others made it back after trekking to the beach on the other side; Lorie looked extremely red in the face but began to return to a normal colour after floating in the sea for a while. Once we had all turned into prunes we got back in the dinks and made our way back to our boats. We said goodbye to Scott and Heather as they are heading in a slightly different direction to us but we may meet up again in a few days time. Back on board it was time for lunch then Gerry had a nap whilst I prepared our evening meal. Later in the afternoon we put the dink back up on the deck and prepared the boat for our evening departure. We began hoisting our anchor at 18.00hrs and motored far enough out of the anchorage to turn into wind and raise our main sail – reefed of course! The wind was very light to begin with, we unfurled the jib and attempted to fly it but it kept collapsing and in the end we furled it back away as we couldn’t stand the noise of the flapping. With just the main flying and the motor turned off we were only managing 4-5 knots until we were some way out to sea. The wind gradually picked up but it was aft of our beam so we were rolling from side to side for most of the trip. Our speed increased with the stronger wind and we managed to do a respectable 6.5 -7 knots for the rest of the passage. Both Gerry and I tried to fly the jib at various times during the night, but the wind just wouldn’t stay in the right direction to fly it. Eventually we gave up trying leaving just the main to do the work. The worst thing about that was that the boat rolled from side to side all the way making it very difficult to get to sleep when it was time to be off watch, neither of us slept very well all night. Again we saw the Southern Cross in the night sky – it’s beginning to feel like we are really on our way home.

Photos from camera of Gypsy Palace