First 3 Days on the way to Valencia

Here I am again. After untie the lines at 12.00 h UTC at Didim the first 12 hours have been totally relaxing, in the first night the predicted east wind established and since then we are fighting with 30 to 40 knots of wind and rather big waves from the back. At the beginning I was using the “blue water runner” until around 25 knots of wind. Then I changed back to the normal jib. The cool thing about the bwr is, that this sail is furling, which makes it totally easy for short- or single-handed crews. However from then on the wind and the waves increased hour by hour, and sailing dead downwind in like rodeo riding, it’s not possible to predict the next move of the boat and you always hat to expect the unexpected, a couple of bruises are the witnesses of this bumpy ride. The other problem was, that because we were sailing in between many small islands, the use of the wind vane steering was not possible, because we had to hold the course for not to crash into an island. This fact in combination with the dead downwind course made the whole thing rather tricky….. not much sleep the first night. After being out of the many islands the whole thing became a bit simpler even if the wind still building up to 38 knots (force 8), in the meantime we only had the main with 3 reefs up and still surfed like hell. If a wave breaches into the stern and the rudder, Lifgun was making a side jump and the autopilot started fighting to bring her back on track…so it was a wild ride for sure. 

Now we are in front of Sicily and still heading west. The wind calmed down to 20 knots which gives me the opportunity to write something. It’s still a bit bumpy but better than before. Lifgun is doing great, it seems that all fixes we did are working. The only thing who was making troubles was the watt and see hydro generator bracket, the force with bumpy and fast rides on the bracket are huge..the whole thing was not able to deal with that forces and falling apart. A soon as the conditions are better, I’ll try to fix it. Then this thing is genius, after 2 days my batteries were topped without using the engine or the generator. 

So, the first around 500 miles towards Valencia are behind us and have been an awesome cool ride so far. Cheers to all.

From 36.13.744 N / 18.07.421 E.