This is what I wrote last night:

Thursday evening  7 November

I was all set to try and get to Ibiza in the next three days but when I took a last look at the weather bulletin  it showed that tonight the wind will turn from NE to SW and at force 7 to 8 ( 45 knots…) That would be pure masochism if not suicide to try and tack against this kind of wind force. Bu because it was such a perfect summer day I opted for a short sail to Fortignan. About 20 miles to the west. I left at noon and arrived here just at dusk, 6 p.m. I had not sailed since the mast went down last August in St. Louis de Rhone. And this was a good opportunity to check if everything was working o.k. The wind was about 15 knots. I had to make a few long tacks against the wind. With full main and my old 140% Genoa  that I bought used in Annapolis in 2009. The repairs that I had done this summer to the main sail, through Q-Sail,  were done well. Much better than the previous repairs done in Volendam by you know who. This  genoa does not sail well hard to the wind. Off the wind, which will be the routine on crossing the Atlantic in the trade winds it will be o.k. And I still have my 145% and 120% Mylar head sails that I have never used cruising solo because they are very difficult to fold alone. But since I have no more use for them, since my racing days are done, I will just wear them down for how long they will last The Genoa lead blocks did not tear through the new thinner deck.  I had almost forgotten how much I love the movement of my boat under sail. The Monitor windvane worked flawlessly.

Frontignan is close to Sète. I had planned to go here (on the inside passage) to step the mast but ended up in Port Camargue. Thi is a smaller and funkier place. I will check it out tomorrow. I do not think that there is a good weather window tomorrow. But at least I now know that everything seems to work and in the  worst case I’ll short hop the Spanish coast southward.

Friday afternoon: The forecast from tomorrow onward for the next week are just fine for going non-stop to Ibiza. Mostly down wind or reaching. So, I plan to take off in the morning. This afternoon I have a technician scheduled to come and see if he can make sense of all the rainbow of wire colors to connect. Who knows this might become my lucky day, again. It never howled from the SW last night and wonder about the forecasts. But it has been raining since this morning and it is a dreary day here. So, this time I might be out of reach for a few days. I tried the SailMail connection on fully charged batteries, last night. No luck.

This is another long weekend here with the November 11 veterans day.