SANTANDER (Day Four)

With the weather turning a bit manky, we chose to stay on board for what we’re hoping will be our final day in Santander; I have lots of catching up do anyway. I think it’s probably fair to say that most folks are all Santander-ed-out.

If everything goes according to plan, we should be leaving the port at 2am tomorrow morning and start making our way towards Las Palmas. We’re expecting the sea to still be rough, but hopefully the Captain will find us a suitable window in the weather to get us out of the Bay of Biscay and down past the coast of Portugal. We’ve been consulting the ‘Windy’ app which, frankly, paints a rather dismal picture of severe storms continung to blow in rerlentlessly off the Atlantic.

All being well, we should be back at sea tomorrow and my art classes can resume. I’ve negotiated some sketching sessions in amongst the painting classes, so we should, hopefully, be okay for paper and other materials. Because of the expected rough seas, we will once again be sharing the Art and Craft Room with the craft tutor.

As I write this, the wind is howling outside and the ship’s engine is running to try and maintain stability, even though we are along the quayside. The captain has just made an announcement, telling us that he has had to close the upper decks and that the running of the engine is a precaution since a ship behind us has broken free of its moorings. This image is taken from the ‘Bridge Cam’ on our in-cabin TV to show just how grim it is…