Spirit of Adventure blog

We left Tenerife at 2am on the 1st of January. We were scheduled to leave at 6am, but looking at the weather on our way back, I decided to leave earlier in order to have slightly better flexibility to adjust our speed for (you may have guessed) our passage through the Bay of Biscay. We knew that the first two days will still be nice, so we were determined to make the most of them.

As the aftermath of the typhoon in the Philippines two weeks ago, 9 of our fellow crew members suffered significant damage to their properties. We decided to hold a charity event to raise funds to help them in these difficult times. Run – walk – cyclethon was the choice we made, with 1 hour of activity per person. I officially opened it at 4 o’clock in the afternoon on the 1st of January with Werner (Hotel General Manager) having the honour of running first, while I went to change clothes to take over from him at 5 o’clock. I was quite pleased with myself as I completed 25 laps, which equals 10.75 km, in an hour. 3rd Officer Alex took over from me and completed 26 laps. Not a bad start to the event. I did sign up for a bicycle ride the following day, but sadly my left knee wasn’t up to it.

Entering the Bay of Biscay brought the well-known weather. Clouds overtook the sun, temperature dropped from 22 down to 14 degrees C. We deployed our stabilizer fins, and I timed the crossing to tackle the worst part of the weather during the night, so by the morning of the 4th, the worst would be over. We also moved the evening entertainment to an earlier show, when I had an honour to announce Peter Howarth and his Hollies hits.

Kind Regards
Captain Franko Papić