Life is never boring at sea but it’s been a particularly eventful 24 hours on board the Oceans of Hope.

The skipper reports that is started well, “Yesterday we left La Coruna around noon and set the course southwards. Beautiful skies and lots of wind provided great conditions.”  Adding that the plan was, “to have the crew do some real sailing and have them learn more on both sailing tactics and how weather acts.”

However, as they quickly discovered even the best laid plans need to change.  MS Crew Tessa describes it as, “The day that time was always one step ahead of us.”  She explains the reasons why in today’s blog, “There was an emergency trip to the dentist, combined with zero winds and a continuous heeling of 30 percent of the ship. And 45 nautical miles became more than 60.”

The end the boat left the harbour three hours later than the original plan whilst the Bosun had a wisdom tooth removed.  (His mouth is still a little sore but he’s making an excellent recovery.)

However, Tess tells us they made the most of the unexpected delay, “We had a lovely elaborate breakfast on the deck, cleaned the toilets, the floor, and scrubbed the salt from our ship. I even had another hot shower! What a luxury! This was my second in two days (in two weeks) and one might get used to that”.

Thankfully the skipper reported that the day finished better than it began, “We enjoyed really great sailing the whole day with upwind sailing and lots of tacks. We ended in the quiet fishing village of Muxia around midnight."   

He added that they ‘plan’ to “head out around 1130 and continue south towards Porto, where we wish to make a stop one of the coming days. Weather is expected to be mild from south, picking up in the afternoon.”  But as we know plans often change…