Crew Stories

September the 26^th :

Arriving at Lisbon Port Alcantara we had to call the marina to open the bridge, at first there was no answer so Mario kept on trying by vhf. He got an answer “the bridge is open”  we didn’t see it opening so we got an annoyed answer. After more than a hour the DragonFly arrived, they had the same problem especially because they used Ocean Diva as calling name. John had prepared a nice chilli con carne for the crew while mario arranged a mooring for the DragonFly “Archimedes” .The dragonfly entered the mooring and of course they had a problem with the mooring rope (tangled in the bow thruster)  Again Mario went with his head in the water. Problem solved.

After transferring Marcel back to the Ocean Diva the crew said goodbye to the crew of the DragonFly “Kristof, Joris, Saskia”, unfortunately for them the trip ended in Lisbon. The DragonFly will stay at Lisbon for a couple of weeks.

John set sail and left the mooring key heading for Malaga. Wind 10 to 15 knots up to Cape Vincent. The swell got bigger 3-4 meters and on top of that the waves generated by the wind which added an extra half meter. The Diva handled it like she was enjoying it and so did we. A few hours later the crew prepared to get some sleep and started with the watch. 20 minutes later we received a call on the vhf, Mario responded and woke up the crew to change the course and prepare for a jibe, John got up in his underwear, Marcel only in his shorts, Marianne and Lynn (in full sailing gear) where still on deck, Brittany was on her brake. It was a fishing vessel which easily could have taken a different course, we think it was just to mess with the Ocean Diva. After we passed he turned on the spot more than 180 degrees.

Early in the morning the wind dropped. The gennaker  was set. Wind dropped further we needed to fold the gennaker again. But it got stuck on the furler. John had to do some acrobats on the gennaker sprit attaching a rope above the sea, together with Marcel and Brittany eventually they got it, waking up everyone with a lot of noise. Lynn and Mario had to dodge 2 vessels but this did not cause a lot of problems.

The Crew......