A sudden gust

Thank you for your kind concern about my seasickness yesterday. I did take a seasickness pill (which did not stay down for very long) and I was wearing motion sickness wristbands, but it did not seem to help. This is the 4th sailing holiday we have done and I have not really had a problem before, but I think we faced very rough seas yesterday.

This morning we left Cambrils which turned out to be a charming little town, and we may go back to moor there again. The sun was shining, there was not much wind, and Gavin said we should not be facing rough seas today. I put on my wristbands just to be on the safe side...

We had a pleasant morning sailing towards Barcelona, and when the wind got up the boys decided to raise the spinnaker. All was well until the rope used to bring it down again got lost in the high winds and we could not get the spinnaker down again. That meant we were going too fast in the high winds and we had to get it down to be able to go into a port. It was very scary for me to watch the boys battling in the strong winds to pull this huge sail in (Gavin made a compromise pulley system to get it in) and I was terrified that one of them was going to be man overboard at any moment.

The wind then dropped and we were wallowing around in big swells, and that wallowing soon caused me to be seasick again. I decided to best thing was to lie down and sleep, which I did for a short while only to wake up to shouts and panic. From a no wind situation, with us motoring instead of sailing, a sudden squall came up with gale force winds. I had never seen anything like it in my life, winds of force 8 with huge waves crashing right over the top of the boat, Gavin rushing around to manage the sails while Luke battled to steer at the helm. It was a challenge to get into the nearest port, and so we did not make Barcelona but instead have moored at a little place called Ginesta. An awful experience for me (I think the boys secretly liked the adrenalin rush)

This Spanish coast is proving to be rather rough with high winds, nothing like the calm seas we have had in the past around the Greek islands.

Tomorrow is A level and AS level results day....we are all nervous and I don't think we will be sleeping well tonight.