It’s all in the preparation..

Hi everybody, apologies for the delay but we have been both busy and knackered, but nevertheless, I felt obligated to all to give you our first update.

The first requirement was to pack Daisy off, no, not back to the campo, but to her summer resort at Sonjas, where Chantal dutifully drove her over to on Sunday morning, where upon arrival, and seeing all her friends, the four legged variety, Daisy ran off to play without a look back, leaving Chantal with tears in her eyes, but knowing it was where she loved to be.

Sorting the final packing for both the rentals and for our trip, then took up the rest of Sunday through to Monday afternoon, although we did manage a few hours sleep in between, but most of the night was spent wondering what we had forgotten or not yet done to complete the objective. So after locking the house up for the 2nd time as Chantal had forgotten to gather up a variety of herbs that she had been patiently growing, against the elements for the months previously, we finally managed to get away to Garrucha with a fully loaded car.

So we had a plan, first take the food to the boat, then Chantal unpacked, whilst I went to Mercadona, which for the uninitiated is a local supermarket and grabbed a trolley, which solved two problems, one I didn’t have to carry the shopping bags to the boat, but more importantly, gave me the option of loading all the other boxes of wine, clothes, photographic equipment, including a tripod, into it to take to the boat, well I am getting old !  This worked fine and Chantal did a sterling job of making sure everything on the boat had a home, although we are not sure where Steven and his friend will sleep when they arrive !  So the trolley was left on the pontoon right next to the boat laden with empty Mercadona bags , when all of a sudden, Chantal shouts, David, David, I rush up onto the deck from downstairs, when she asks me a question, ‘What’s missing”? I look around and then realise the trolley is not in sight,  Chantal had seen the wind take it over the other side of the pontoon and disappear into the marina, on the way down clipping the back end of a motor boat, although all it did was take some barnacles off the prop of the engine. So we had numerous bags floating around which needed rescuing, then we attempted to get the trolley back with the boat hook, was it was a fruitless exercise, but what really upset me was the fact that it still had my euro in it !

So we had our first mishap and we hadn’t even left the marina. We were joined by some good friends who came down for a tipple and to see us off in the evening, so thanks to Micaela, Peter, Elaine, who even bought her own glasses so we didn’t need to wash up, Ali and Margaret, who attempted to get on the boat in a pair of 4 inch wedges !    After our guests departed, we grabbed a quick pizza and crashed for the night, knowing we had to be up at about 5.15am.

Dawn arrives and we were ready, we let the lines slip and said our final goodbyes to Garrucha, oh and all the dust ! Sadly no wind at this time of day but for once the current was with us so we made good headway until we got past Carboneras and the wind decided to come to the party, sadly, on our nose ! So after tacking a few times up past Cabo de Gato, we realised that time was not on our side and gave way to having the engine on once again.

14 hours later we arrived safely at Almerimar to be told our fenders made our normally 12m x 4m boat, to wide for a 12m x 4m wide berth and we were allocated a 15 metre berth with all the associated cost, but fortunately Almerimar is probably the cheapest marina on this stretch of coast. We saw no dolphins, pilot whales or anything interesting en-route. Too tired to eat we climbed into our pit for a well earned rest.

The last 2 days have been spent, having the Davits fitted, new dinghy and outboard motor delivered, engine serviced and anchor chain extended by another 15 metres.

Being of a safety first concious crew, we decided to check the emergency rudder, in case ours had an issue and found that the nice people from Dufour had made the slot too small for it to fit into the steering column, but fortunately we already had just the person for the job, and Stuart, who made the davits for us, took it away to grind it out and it now fits perfectly. Hopefully however to never be used!

The plan now is to leave on Friday night for Ibiza, as the winds look favourable, at least on paper, until Saturday night, when it drops off to a force 1, so we will be reverting back to our newly serviced engine thereafter. So the next update should come in 3-4 days, hopefully from the island of Ibiza…..