Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
From Torrevieja we moved on to Cartagena. The sail there included about 5 hours of tacking in a force 5, bit bumpy - Anna suddenly seems to have noticed that the boat moves about and has taken against it! She spent most of the sail cuddled on my lap underneath a blanket!In Cartagena we found the friendliest marina in the world ever, as well as meeting up with Gerard - who we had made friends with last year in the same place. There were a lot of other French boats there and it was a sociable marina with most boats planning to head the same way - Gibraltar, morocco, canaries, cape verde etc.My dad (Robert) flew into Murcia to stay with us for 5 days and we had a great time with him, seeing the sights of Cartagena. We visited a museum in air raid shelters from the civil war, a roman theatre, a very high 'panoramic lift' and took in the ambience of Cartagena in general. Unfortunately my advice to dad before he left of 'don't worry about waterproofs, it doesn't really rain here' was rubbish and the last day was spent in torrential downpour. It was also spent walking the streets as Double Helix was lifted out of the water for a bit of essential rudder repair.Audrey the autohelm had lost her way again inspet of all the reinforcements on the trip from Torrevieja, and we think the problem came from a bit of play in the rudder, so we arranged a lift out to sort it.During the two days she was out of the water, we stayed in a hotel, which was quite a novelty! The girls played baths for a few hours each day (as did I) and at night we all tossed and turned, not being used to all sleeping in a small room together! Ellen and Anna approved of the buffet breakfast which included chocolate muffins, chocolate cereal and more.The yard failed to make use of the dry weather to put 3 layers of antifoul on as we had asked, so they grudgingly allowed John to do it himself. John worked like a trooper and got 3 coats on before they lifted us back in 2 days later.Since then we firmed up plans with our friend Gerard, and he will be crossing the atlantic with us this winter, as crew.We moved on to Almerimar (the night passage went very badly as the engine stopped suddenly and it took us 5 hours to locate and fix the problem (a blocked fuel pipe) so neither of us got much sleep! It was strange to be back in Almerimar where we had bought the boat last year, we were even back in the exact same berth as before! We had a very sociable time (as well as productive - we emptied and cleaned out the header fuel tank, changed fuel filters, did an oil change, got the trampolines re-wellded and re-strung), meeting up with Vanessa and Manu (from the green heart place in Ibiza) Muriel and Stephan who we met last year (Muriel said she likes us better this time), and met a lovely Aussie couple who treated us to a BBQ (the girls behaved very well).We left there this evening and are now heading off to Gibraltar (new territory again). It is still my watch for another 45 minutes - it has been a quiet on except for 5 beautiful dolphins who came to entertain me for a while!
- comments