Biscay part 1

We set sail from Brest on Wednesday 13th November midday with a good forecast. So good in fact that I was worried that we would not have enough wind to sail. The Marina was like a mill pond and the sun was shining.

Our destination La Coruna, Northern Spain. 340 Nautical Miles away. 

The Wilde family aboard 'Tarquilla' waved us bon voyage as we left our berth and motored to the fuel pontoon to fill up.

Meteo consult marine weather predicted NE 3 veering to SSE , wave height 1-2 metres rising to 2-3 metres and a similar forecast for the next 3 days.

Passage weather/ Sling the hook agreed.

A good forecast indeed. Should be even better than the beginning of the week and best of all, no rain.
I shouldn't have feared about low winds, there was 15 - 20 knts all day.
In typical form, the wind was right on our nose, so we motored all of the way out of the channel.

 You can't have everything I suppose, the tide was with us. However we would be on a comfortable beam reach for the Bay of Biscay crossing.
Once we switched the engine off we really started motoring so to speak. Over 8 knts. As we progressed the sea became progressively rougher. We put a reef in the mainsail to reduce speed. 'Artemis' our Hunter Legend 37.5 was going like a train! 

Still too fast, another reef was better. 

Marvelous sailing.

Come nightfall, we had made good progress so we put the boat to bed by furling in most of the Genoa to avoid worrying about it during the night.  We then took turns to keep watch while the auto pilot did the steering. We were looking forward to Spain and some warmer weather.

First Alison started feeling queasy, then me ( a first for Alison ). Then 30 minutes later the auto pilot alarm kept signalling - off course - time and time again and had to be switched off. I steered for an hour but Alison was too ill to take her turn. I was feeling rather ill myself by then. 

I made the decision to heave to and basically stopped and drifted for the rest of the night. We had plenty of sea around us to drift into.
We took turns between vomiting to keep watch. By morning we were both completely disabilitated. Headache, stomach ache, aches and pains and of course nausea.

Alison had never been sea sick before. Not on our sailing trips together or when she worked on cruise ships as a croupier. I regularly felt rough for the first day. We had spent the last month in a marina, not exactly good preparation with hindsight.

How long we would be ill for was unknown. We were in no fit state to sail a yacht, that was for sure. We could barely move a mussle without feeling sick.

Thursday morning, the sea state had got less predictable and looked like a small mountain range. We had 140 odd metres beneath us, so hadn't left the continental shelf. In deeper water, we were told, you get the Atlantic swell with long rolling waves and a smoother ride.

Every wave was breaking, we really were crossing a wilderness.

Decisions had to be made. 

Plan B ?