Thursday, 26 October 2017

The Wrinch boys are in town!







A couple of days after the trip to see the boat Olly came out to join us on the Moondance,  closely followed by Tim and Lucy - all 3 together - a rare treat indeed!
So what happens when the Wrinch boys get together on a boat in the sun?
1. They find a BIG cliff and , well, throw themselves of it.










2. Stand on the side of the boat, put a rubber ring in the water and see if they can back flip into it

                                                                                              ... nearly got it!














Take three rubber rings, grab a rope off the back of the boat. It started mellow enough -they even got Lucy out.





 but then Olly threw the gauntlet down and shouted go ....







At 7 knots breathing became a problem!







Happily there were some mellower pastime. A sunset sail,

a balooning trip for Tim and Lucys birthdays



Sailing, and swimming- Three men and their dog!






Cool Dog or Dad?


















Olly took some nice photos of Moondance in action.







On Wednesday everyone left to go their separate ways. Tim and Lucy to finish their weeks holiday in the mountains of Mallorca, Olly set off on the next leg of lifes journey to Malaga where he hopes to set up a bike park, Melanie and Woody went with Olly for a few days on the mainland.









I was joined by my old friend Gordon who arrived a little jet lagged from Canada.
No matter - fresh air, a barbie on the beach and a little beer in a beautiful calm anchorage soon had him back to sorts!


 We are now taking the next step on our two hull journey. We have shaken hands on the Privelege catamaran. She is located on the mainland just south of Barcelona (incredible luck - 100 miles away - she could have been anywhere in Europe!), we are going to sail over to drop all our gear from Moondance before putting her on the market.

Thursday, 12 October 2017

One hull or two?

We had a wonderful weekend in Madrid; it was lovely to see Louisa and Richard again. Like London buses, having not seen Louisa for 20 years we have seen them twice in 2 years!











After a days rubber necking we hit the town for a fabulous tapas dinner- then on to the clubs! Well sort off, we went to a Flamenco club to watch them strut their stuff and it was impressive indeed! Real Flamenco isn't the red flouncy dresses that you see in the tourist resorts that are a poor take off of the Folie Bergere. Flamenco is mostly danced by a single male or female seriously strutting their stuff and was well likened by Richard to a David Attenborough nature show on birds puffing their chests out to impress the girls! It was very intense, fabulously noisy from the tap shoes and very engaging. We thoroughly recommend it for a nights entertainment in Madrid!












And of course, when in Madrid, you have to do the tourist bit!
Do we follow the demonstrations of the world round the world or do they follow us? From Gays and Fascists in Sweden to Gay and Lesbian parades in Paris and now independence demonstrations in Madrid!






Within 3 days of getting back from Madrid we were on the great silver bird back to the main land again, this time to Barcelona. The story to this one spreads over about a month.
Melanie doesn't like to tip on a boat, nor does she like to roll (with that I have to sympathise). Having rolled for 400 miles down the Atlantic coast of Spain and Portugal I convinced myself that it wouldn't happen in the Med; in the Atlantic we had 30 knots of wind most of the way and, well, it was the Atlantic, the Meds just a big pond right? Well yes, and the swell is smaller, but its short and its steep and within the first 200 miles into the med when my glass flew across the cockpit during a particularly big roll I just thought - this has got to stop- I don't like this never mind Melanie! The way to stop the rolling - 2 hulls - and so the decision was made, we would cash in my beloved Moondance with whom I have shared so many adventures and get a catamaran.


Coincidentally we are in the mega center of the sailing world for cats. Everywhere we anchor there is at least one cat so a little cheekily we rowed over to every cat and said hello and asked if we could take a look! There are many fewer makes of catamarans than mono hulls so very quickly we were able to home in on what we wanted. The more we homed in the luckier we got with viewings; exactly what we wanted to see would pull into the anchorage and over we would go with some beer for a look around!
The next piece of luck was that, having homed in on what we wanted, there was one available close to us just south of Barcelona so we went over to see it yesterday. So many cats are frankly floating sheds and after having had such a beautiful sea worthy boat I couldn't face one of those; we did manage to find a well built boat that did actually at least resemble a sailing boat. The angle of the photo and the 'tent' round her cockpit do not do her justice!
We liked her very much; we have put in an offer; watch this space!

Thursday, 5 October 2017

On to the Balearics

The Costa del Sol is not really a cruising coast. I has no sheltered anchorages, lots of fancy marinas housing super yachts with prices to match and high rise hotels. The plan was to pass by this lot and head to Ibiza in 2 or 3 overnight hops but, having had such excellent winds behind me for a week they were about to turn against us. Gentlemen they say don't sail into the wind, the leaning plays havoc with the gin and tonic, so we decided to take advantage of 2 days of calm and motor the 400 miles to Ibiza, it would take about 2 days and nights .

Calm, easy going, no excitement - right?? It was not to be. At 6 am on the second morning whilst I was enjoying a cup of tea and watching the stars, the engine coughed, hicuped, coughed again - and died. Another blockage I thought, no big deal. I got the tools out, stripped the usual offending place for a blockage - it was clean as a whistle. Hmm. Well, I was sure it was lack of fuel so it had to be a blockage somewhere. At this point I was getting a little stressed, 50 miles from land, not a breath of wind, no engine and unsure if I could get it going again. Head down, I was sure it was fuel starvation, find the problem. I broke the fuel feed system into about 5 different section and set to giving each section the suck test - with the mark 1 mouth. How I love the taste of diesel in the morning! If I sucked diesel through then that section was clear. After 3 section3 and several mouth fulls of diesel fuel I got not a blockage, nor diesel but air - hmm, not what I expected at all. Further investigation turned up a split fuel pipe where the pipe attached to the filter - the engine was sucking not fuel but air - bingo! I cut off the end of the offending pipe, reattached it and after what ended up being a two hour stoppage as we drifted around the Mediterranean, away we went.

We arrived that evening in a pleasant cove on the island of Formentera, just east of Ibiza.
Not to be out done, Woody also had to have his own little experience with a piece of pipe. Melanie had seen him chewing a piece of pipe he had found, about 6" long and 1/2" diameter and thought nothing of it, he wasn't doing any harm chewing that. It wasn't until the next morning that Melanie thought about the pipe again when she found it left in Woodys morning pile on the fore deck - how I do not know but he had managed to swallow a 6" length of pipe, it had gone straight through him and out the other end - that is one hell of a gut that can handle that, he should have ended up in hospital! We shall be more careful in future.

We had a pleasant lazy couple of days here then headed over to Ibiza. Ibiza town, much to our surprise, turned out to be very pleasant indeed; pretty, uncrowded and a nice first taste of the Med.


We wanted particularly to spend some time in Menorca, reputedly the nicest of the Balearics, before coming back to Mallorca to meet the kids in a couple of weeks so we beatled up to Menorca in 3 pleasant days sailing in succession. The wind was on shore which sadly ruled out anchoring because there was no shelter which meant we had to go into marinas.
Our last night on Mallorca we moored up in a typical marina in typical Med fashion - sardines -  with what seemed like every other boat in the Med! How I hate marinas -get me to a pleasant Menorcan anchorage!


What a pretty place Menorca is. The coast of Mallorca was scarred all the way up by high rise hotels and beach resorts; not so Menorca where they are said to have stopped the building after the first few went up in the '80's having seen what happened to Mallorca. As a result Menorca has retained much of its island charm.


We found some lovely coves to anchor in.













We have a line from the stern to the rocks here to stop us swinging round the anchor with the wind and hitting the rocks as there is so little space.





One of the coves was surrounded by dozens of caves inhabited thousands of years ago and still used by lovers - a couple of which had left their mark in the rock!









Walking round the caves we came across this little chap scuttling into the under growth.





We had a couple of bike rides to the north side of the island and one day met up with Nigel and Ali Christopher for lunch who were out here for a holiday.


After 3 very pleasant days the weather turned and we had 5 days of damp air, no sunshine and crime of crimes - rain! Everything got pretty damp on board so when the sun came out again  yesterday and it was time to head back to Mallorca, we did our Chinese laundry bit; Woody couldn't make up his mind for all the cushions he had to choose from to sit on!

We are now on Porto Cristo on the east coast of Mallorca where we are leaving the boat for a couple of days to go to Madrid to meet up with some Australian friends who are over here for a months holiday.