Maiden Voyage

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Just as dawn was breaking on February 1st we slipped away from the dock in La Rochelle and set sail for our first port of call, Bilbao in Northern Spain.

The forecast was for light winds on our nose so we anticipated motoring this first leg, all 30 plus hours of it.  We’d also been encouraged to take this time to break the engines in a little.

However, after a couple of hours motoring the wind picked up and was at the perfect angle to raise the main and the jib and get our girl sailing. And sail she did for the next 15 hours at a steady and smooth 7 knots. 

With the engines off all we could hear was the wind in the sails and the hulls cutting through the water. Bliss.

And then the dolphins arrived.  

They played in our bow wake, zig zagging and breaching for quite some time.  With the boat on auto pilot Mike and I clipped our tethers to the jack lines for safety and went up to the bow to watch our chorus line of cetaceans.  Joy, pure joy.

As darkness fell we began our night watches.  3 hours on and 3 hours off to enable each of us to get a little bit of sleep at a time.  I’ve done night watches before when sailing from San Francisco to Hawaii, but always with another crew member, never alone. We had decided that for our initial night passages on Dreams of Infinity we would motor, just until we’d had a chance to get used to sailing her.  But, she was sailing so well and the conditions were so benign we couldn’t bring ourselves to switch the sails for the noisy engine and so we sailed her through most of the night.

My first night watch was 11 pm – 2 am and when I got to the helm Mike was peering over the side with a huge smile.  He’d been accompanied by dolphins for the last few hours, leaving a bioluminescent wake as they buzzed back and forth, creating a magical light display.  They kept me company too, my guardian angels on my first solo night watch.

It was dark, proper dark.  The moon and stars were hiding behind the clouds and the only light was the red glow coming from the navigation instruments. 

We’d spent most of the day looking for and avoiding fisherman’s pots and lines but at night, when it’s this dark, you just have to take a deep breath and hope you don’t run into anything. 

At 3 am the wind died so we had to switch on the engines and drop the sails. I was sleeping in the saloon in my foulies, ready to help at a moments notice.  It didn’t take long to get the sails down and I was soon able to return to sleep.

Daylight came at 8:30 am and the remainder of our journey was under engine power.  At 3:30 pm we entered the outer walls of the harbor.  Bilbao is Spain’s largest port so it was another hour before we reached the marina at  Real Club Marítimo del Abra in Getxo, our home for the weekend.