Monday - 11 June 2018

This was a day of contrasts. We had the blackest of nights with cloud cutting out all of the light. It was very difficult to hold course, and steering was being done by instruments alone. We could not even see the water. However, after daybreak, the clouds cleared and we were treated to spectacular champagne sailing. We had the wind just behind the beam, glorious sunshine and reasonable wind. We were flying along and the crew were all vying to record the highest speed. Everyone’s best was recorded in the log book, with the highest being 10.5 knots. In the end our days run was 175 miles, which I make an average of 7.29 knots. Exactly the reason we go sailing, fantastic conditions.

The wind swung round a little, and so we turned more to the south to get a good wind angle rather than going all the way to the way-point. During this process we went beyond the edge of the continental shelf. The depth went from 170 metres to 4600 metres, this is more than three times the height of Ben Nevis and quite difficult to imagine. We spoke of how little we know about what happens in the ocean depths. We also filled the time by calculating how long it would take for an object dropped over the side to actually reach the bottom. I think the calculation got stuck on whether the water density under that much pressure would actually let something penetrate (answers on a postcard please).The guide book says that this crossing Biscay is crossing an ocean and it certainly feels like that. We haven’t seen another ship since the middle of last night.

Before it got dark we decided to reduce sail, to have a bit less power to control during the hours of darkness. We were experiencing reasonably large waves, and had been surfing down them during the day, but as we know that this gets more difficult when you can’t see the waves coming, we took the prudent course. We turned to head into the wind to make this sail change and mid-way though the manoeuvre, a couple of dolphins appeared to check out what we were doing.

Distance covered today	175	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	378	nautical miles
Distance covered 2018	1098	nautical miles

Steve (and Tricia)