Sierra De Almeria,Spain

After a great run through the Straights the wind has, as expected, at
last turned on us. 20 kts constant gusting at 30 and peaking at
35, straight out of the east. On a starboard tack we are pushing north
and on a port tack we going south, making very little progress against
the strong winds and big seas. Nice thing about the Med is that there
are many places you can run for shelter, and so it happens that we find
ourselves at Club de Mar, Almeria. 25 euros for the day and we will be
leaving at first light when the weather has died down a bit. We arrived
here at about 2pm and should be out of here at about 8am. We will be
hoping to sail around the tip of Almeria and head in a north easterly
direction as the wind will be more favourable for us. In a day or three
we should encounter the northerlies which we can then use to run east.

Brad and Felix went for a long walk through the city to go and look at a
bullfighting ring, a castle, a cathedral and some other interesting
sites. I went up the main street for about an hour. Strange how quiet a
city can be, besides the noise of traffic. Not much hooting or sirens
around here, just the continious hum of vehicles going past.

We had a constant charade of ships last night and had to alter our
course a few times. Some of the ships changed there course slightly for
us, especially the ones coming up from behind. Felix has settled in
exceptionally well and is already a valuable crewmember in many
regards. He did a two month sailing course at Atlantic Yachting in
Langebaan and it has served him well. I know Adrian and Healy who owns
Atlantic Yachting and they train there students well. I've had a few of
there crewmembers before and have never been disappointed. Pieter, our
previous crewmember, has had a succesful operation and is on light duty
for the next six weeks. We miss his banter very much, but Felix in his
own way is finding a place into our hearts. It takes a lot of load from
our shoulders to have him aboard with us. We now have the luxury of
reading, writing, chatting and more than enough sleep. One really
appreciates these things when you have been without it for a while. In a
way, today is also a little bit of rest for Brad and me who has been two
handing it from Madeira, popped in and out of Cadiz to get a good
weather window through Gibraltar and in the morning we will all be as
good as new.

Only about 1100 nm to go and this will be our last stop before Greece,
except if something drastic happens on the way.The stop today was
totally unplanned, and the nice thing about having electronic charts of
the whole world is that you can confidently go in anywhere. The nicest
thing for me when we get to land is to phone my lovely wife and daughter
from a call box. The sat phone is ok, but the delay and sometimes bad
signal can be frustrating at times, never knowing when you will just be
cut off. Today was no exception and always great to suprise them from
some unexpected place.Of course we also do our position report on
Mondays and Thursdays to Nicky in Cape Town.Her reply on my mail to
inform her of our quick stop, tongue in cheek was Hmmmmmmmm, Storm off
the coast of Spain. That's your story and you're sticking to it.
Eish,some boys !

And you ? How have you been keeping ? I promise to throw some random
thoughts at you again soon. Ha ha ha.

Paul