Day 2 – Flat seas and fast reaching

Our trip has been somewhat delineated by the turn to go east (or slightly before) – the big waves/more wind than you want section, and the amazingly flat/wind from the beam or rear quarter section that has had us flying along smoothly.  We’re really enjoying the sailing we ‘ve been able to do this second part of the trip.  Making hot meals at the stove is easy, we’re not turning green at the thought of wrestling our foulies off for the off-watch, and the air temperature is so much nicer (30+ knots from behind at night kept us really cold the first night).
We’ve seen lots of commercial traffic in the shipping lanes and are playing, “What kind of ship is THAT?”  Containers, passenger, bulkers, and tankers – surprisingly, we have not seen a lot of fishing vessels, but it is possible that they sanely stayed in port for the first day, and our track over the second day put us further offshore than they tend to go.

The dolphins last night were incredible.  The water has a lot of phosphorescence, and the boat’s wake and bow wave at night creates a glowing fan of whiteness.  Then the dolphins came at lightning speed from all directions like glowing, white missiles through the water – we must have seen fifty dolphins throughout the night surfing our bow waves and swimming alongside as we made 7-8 knots in the flat conditions.  We have seen dolphins in phosphorescent water before, but last night was rather exceptional.  We did not see any schools of fish being chased by the dolphins this time around, like we had in our initial approach to Portugal last summer.

Our ETA to Gibraltar is sometime in the early morning tomorrow.  Our position is 36 deg 13.949′ N, 6 deg 58.926′ W.  84nm to go.