We watched Episode 2 of Blue Planet III on iPlayer a couple of days ago and a few things struck a chord with us. We’ll gloss over the killer whales (orcas) which hunted down a magnificent adult blue whale. It was reminiscent of the racer snake v baby marine iguana chase 10 years ago on Planet Earth II. Spoiler alert - outcome of this chase is at bottom of the post.   I’ve taken screenshots from the programme to explain what we saw floating past us one day out in the Atlantic Ocean. We’d not long left A Coruna and were sailing south, but we didn’t manage to get close enough to get any photos with my phone.  One story was about Velella Velella or ‘By the wind sailors’ as they are also known, which are free floating animals that live on the surface of the open ocean. Their small stiff ‘sail’ pouch catches the wind and they can drift for hundreds of miles across the sea. We saw two Portuguese Man O’War with translucent bright pinky-purple ‘sails’ - like a deflating floating party ...

We left Ibiza town under cloudy skies with a vague plan to head up to the north eastern point of the island to find a nice anchorage to spend the night. By doing this it would make the trip from there to Palma manageable in one long day, rather than having to do another overnight passage. We normally know exactly where we’re heading but with a very rolly sea, an uncomfortable swell and wind that was likely to change direction during the afternoon we needed to have a few options. We’d identified four or five possible anchorages from the Navily App and poked our noses/bow into the first three and quickly discounted them as being too open to the swell.  The fourth one looked promising, albeit very small. We named it ‘One Boat Bay’ although its official name is Cala Aigua Dolça, which translates to Freshwater Cove. We dropped our anchor in the only sandy spot, avoiding the Posidonia Seagrass, and made sure it was well dug in for the expected wind change. About an hour later a large cat...

A long day, a longer night and a short post. We left Santa Pola at 11:00, heading north east following the Costa Blanca coastline and the dense skyscraper filled skyline of Benidorm. We managed a short sail before the wind changed direction again and the motor went back on. The sun set behind us at 18:00, the navigation lights went on and we set course for our overnight passage to Formentera, a small island just south of Ibiza. Over the 100 mile trip we saw a few sailing boats, a couple of cargo ships and 4 fishing boats responsible for about 30 buoys, some lit, most not which we had to try and find with our searchlight then alter course to avoid them. With a clear sky we saw quite a few shooting stars (it’s the time of year for the Leonid Meteor shower), many constellations and the Milky Way. We did roughly 2 hours on watch and 2 hours off watch during the night. It wasn’t as cold or windy as the Biscay crossing but the dark night hours are longer now. Beautiful sunrise with elephant ...

Mainland Spain is said to have over 3000 miles of coastline, from the Cantabrian section on its northern border with France, to Portbu on its Mediterranean border in the Gulf du Lyon. In a previous post I covered our journey along the Galician Coast and the ominously named Costa de Morte (Coast of Death).   We changed the courtesy flags as we re-entered Spanish waters after travelling about 400 miles along the Portuguese Atlantic coast and the Algarve. The Spanish coastline is split into a number of named ‘Costas’ and in southern Spain we’ve now covered six of them. From out at sea they range from rugged, arid and uninhabited to lengthy stretches of tourist developments, although, so far, they’re mostly small scale and low rise. Costa de la Luz (Coast of Light) This stretches the Atlantic coast of southwestern Spain from the mouth of the Guadiana River, which forms the border with Portugal, as far as Tarifa, near the Straits of Gibraltar.  Vibrant and picturesque Ayamonte sits...

Doesn’t time fly. It’s been six weeks since we left Cardiff and in another four weeks we’ll be making our way towards Cap d’Agde in France where we will leave Seascape for the winter and we’ll get the TGV/Eurostar back home. Here’s a quick update on the numbers …. I’ve lost count of the number of fishing buoys we’ve seen, and couldn’t even hazard a guess as to how many we’ve passed or had to avoid, because they are everywhere. Some are well marked, others are virtually impossible to see, some are close to shore, others are miles out.  I’ve also stopped counting the number of dolphins we’ve seen. They are still making an appearance most days, some are quite large and slow while others are fast and jumping nearby. But they don’t seem to stick around and aren’t as playful here in the Med, they’re probably too busy fishing.  And we’ve been so lucky with the weather that most days we see amazing sunrises and beautiful sunsets. So in 6 weeks….. 1646 miles covered  1560 tea bags...