The Notch

Saturday 18 September 2021

Short run yesterday around east side of Gibraltar and along Spanish coast to Estapona open roadstead for semi-restful sleep, rolling with swell. Looks like big northeast winds start tomorrow night with a lull too brief to get anywhere absent beating our brains out, then on through next Friday. Thus we sail overnight (this is a figure of speech as wind will remain nearly zero) to Aguadulce, just west of Almeria, where protection should be good. Roughly spaced after that are Cartegena, Alicante and Valencia. Due holdup may decide to skip all and go directly to Formentera or Ibiza in Balearics, a two hundred thirty mile double overnight.

Delay is particularly disappointing as we appeased several wind gods last night with rum and gin to induce the headaches of sacrifice. Skeiron, Zephyrus, Lips, Notus and Euronotus are the Greek/Roman gods of NW, W, SW, S and SE winds respectively. Njord is the Norse wind guy for sailor's. Pakaa does double duty as the Hawaiian wind god who invented sails. Also gave Aeolus and Boreas a jingle. Any one of these characters could have helped, but they just couldn't be bothered so we'll be stuck in Aguadulce for perhaps five days. Quick check in Wiki counts a hundred named wind gods. Guess we didn't pray to the right one.

Jack & Jan