After a restless night at the mooring buoy in St. Mary’s, we set off at 5:30 a.m. with the first light and the ebb tide. Over the past few days, I’d been very preoccupied with the weather and had been making myself crazy over whether it would be better to sail directly from here to Madeira (most probably considering the prevalent weather), but I ultimately decided against it. There was a light tailwind, so we sailed goosewinged. Unfortunately, the swell kept getting stronger and was coming more from the side, even though the wind direction hadn’t changed, so the sails soon started flapping so hard that I had to reef them down quite a bit. We were now moving pretty slowly, but at least we were heading in the right direction. Toward evening, we were once again accompanied by dolphins. Somehow, that never gets boring and is always great fun.
