David's Diary: Monday, February 25, 2002

Passage from L'Ampolla to Alicante

We have stopped for a week in L'Ampolla, a place that we had never planned to visit, but for which we are glad that we made the detour. But we need to start making more progress to the south. We need to be in the Balearic Islands off the Spanish mainland coast next month. The closest point for reaching the Balearics is more than a hundred nautical miles to the south.

To make faster progress, we have decided to make our longest passage ever -- almost two hundred nautical miles that we expect to take more than thirty hours to complete. We left L'Ampolla in darkness, but as we start working our way around the Ebro River Delta the sun rises in the east and we are treated to a spectacular sunrise.

Reading Harry Potter

We have started a new tradition on Dragonsinger. When conditions are right, Karalee takes time during the first couple of hours of a passage to read one of the Harry Potter books to Allen. All of us except Allen have read all four of the Harry Potter books and all of us enjoyed seeing the movie made from the first book when we were in Barcelona (we even got to see it in English). While we motor into a flat sea and the sun starts to rise in the sky, we all listen to the adventures of Ron, Hermione, and Ron as they overcome obstacles to save the Philosopher's Stone.

Sunset and Preparing For Night Time

Like our other long passages, we set up a watch system as soon as we left L'Ampolla. During the day, we serve four hour watches and as night approaches we switch to three hour watches. Jocelyn does watches with Karalee and Kevin does watches with David. Allen is free to do as he wishes, but he usually falls asleep shortly after sunset and sleeps through the night.

As the sun sets, we all sit outside enjoying the fantastic colors in the sky. It is only around 7:00 as darkness falls and we have dinner in the cockpit. Soon afterwards, Kevin and I get some sleep as Jocelyn and Karalee avoid the freighters that they see on radar. All too soon it is time for Kevin and I to take our watch and leave the warmth of the main cabin for the darkness and cold outside. It takes all of our concentration to watch for other boat traffic and obstacles, imagined or real.