october 1 2006 : costa de sol, spain
Thankfully the weather cooperated and did what was predicted, which was to be very light and on the nose. We are now running a mile offshore along the southern coast of Spain. The view is beautiful, with layer after layer of mountain fading into the distance.

Unfortunately it looks like we’re going to have to find ourselves a Volvo mechanic as soon as we can. I still haven’t completely solved the port engine problem, and now the starboard engine is acting up. It’s making a different sound, sort of a higher pitch than it used to. It doesn’t sound good and we are completely avoiding using that engine at this point. This passage included a long stretch of poor weather and the boat has taken some lumps because of it.

october 4 2006 : duquesa, spain
Things just do not want to improve for us. We finally beat our way into Benalmadena marina the other morning. The marina hadn’t answered any of our emails but our cruising guide said they had one thousand berths, making them the largest marina we’d ever visited. We weren’t too concerned about them having space available. Turns out we should have been. They looked at me like I must be crazy when I went into the office and told them we’d like to stay a couple of weeks. They had one spot that we could use for a day or two, but no longer than that. We figured if we stayed a couple of days there, another spot would open up, or the marina would find somewhere else for us, so we moved the boat into a tight slip between a concrete wall and a big motorboat.

Anxious to get off the boat, we went for a walk. It was an ultra touristy area with loads of restaurants and boats lined up to take people out for a one hour tour of the waterfront. We sat down for a well earned cheeseburger and beer, and watched the lobster colored tourists take their picture in front of the pirate flag after chasing dolphins around at sea.

After dinner we came across a Volvo shop and stopped in to see about getting someone out to have a look at the boat. Inside we found a cute older husband and wife team who were delighted to try and help us despite not speaking a word of English. Ali and I surprised ourselves with how much rudimentary Spanish we actually have and by the end we were pretty confident everybody knew what was going on and we would see the mechanic in two days.

As we were walking away Ali said, “Grazie,” and after correcting her I turned to them and said “Ciao.” We just couldn’t seem to shake off our Italian and get in the full swing of Spanish. Then we found the grocery store where we found food we hadn’t seen since Florida. After dropping thirty bucks on nothing but junk food we raced back to the boat with our two pints of Ben and Jerry’s.

We crashed hard that night. For some reason this passage had really taken a toll on us. We had a couple of days with no wind, but for the most part we spent the last week tacking back and forth into a minimum of twenty-five knots, which is extremely exhausting after a while. Needless to say we were very happy to be sleeping with the boat safely tied up in a marina.

That’s why we weren’t too pleased when at six a.m. we woke to find the boat bucking wildly, straining the docklines. Overnight a swell had worked up and was making its way into the marina. I don’t know if they just screwed up with the design of the breakwall here or what, but we had never seen anything like this before. Monohulls were rocking and rolling in sixty degree arcs, boats were bouncing off of each other, and we were slamming off a concrete wall. Soon we had seven docklines going in every direction, many of them doubled up because they were getting chafed pretty badly, and seven fenders trying to keep Bum from being scraped against the wall. By eight o’clock we felt confident that we weren’t going to be destroyed, but also knew there was no way we were going to spend another night.

We grabbed our Med cruising guide and headed over to the payphone to try and find another marina. We worked our way right down the coast, having no luck. A couple of them said they had space, but as soon as I told them we were a catamaran they said no way. One place said they could give us a spot at three hundred dollars a night. We passed on that and eventually found a place in Duquesa, forty miles away and just around the corner from Gibraltar.

By ten a.m. we were underway again, and none too happy about it. Getting the boat out of our slip was a trick in itself, but somehow we managed without damage as the two foot swell continued to roll through the marina. For the first hour we motored with only a ten knot headwind to contend with. As we got farther out to sea the swell flattened out and things weren’t looking too bad.

I was at the nav station having a look at the charts when Ali called down to me that the wind was twenty-two knots. It had doubled in three minutes. By the time I stepped outside it was closing in on thirty and we weren’t moving. With nowhere else to go we hoisted the sails and started our long tacks out to sea and back into shore again. Over and over we would perform this task throughout the day.

The wind stayed over thirty knots and we were both about ready to throw ourselves off the boat as our thirty-six mile, eight hour trip, turned into a sixty mile, twelve hour bash. Best of all we had absolutely nothing to eat. We had no fresh food left, and with our propane tank not working we couldn’t cook anything either. Eventually Ali came up with dinner, a can of tuna and a half bag of tortilla chips. At that point we had to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

It was 10 p.m. when we finally arrived in Duquesa. There was still one guy working at the marina and he helped us find our spot and tie up. It took me a little while to get the boat lined up as there was a bit of a crosswind and our spot was about 23 feet wide, one foot wider than the boat. We slid right in with just a gentle bump of the fenders on our neighbors and within minutes we were down below sound asleep.

Something I haven’t mentioned is just how cold it has gotten since we left Malta. The water temp went from 86 in Malta to 67 here in Spain. Sixty-seven! We’re back to wearing wool socks around the boat since the water temp pretty well dictates what the temp is inside the hulls. One nice thing about these cooler temps lately is that the dinghy is really holding up exceptionally well. It hasn’t leaked air since day two of the passage, which is easily a record over the last year or so.

Today our top priority was finding a laundromat. It has been something like six weeks since the last time we had it done and we are really picking at the bottom of the closet now. In fact, we’ve gone a step further than that and have been picking clothes back out of the dirty pile. We found a place close by and lugged in four huge sacks full. Before leaving I asked how much it would be and she said about 16 euros. Wow do we hope that’s true.

The rest of the day we spent cleaning the boat. The boat was as nasty as it had ever been. Salt covered pretty much every surface both inside and out. We split up and spent six hours scrubbing away. By the end of the day we were wiped out again so we just picked up some Chinese take-away and a couple of San Miguels from the supermarket and called it a night. I swear we are going to eat some traditional Spanish fare at some point, but it won’t be in these touristy marina developments that’s for sure.

october 7 2006 : benalmadena, spain
Yesterday we left the boat at 6:30 a.m. to make our way to the airport to pick up Ali’s parents. The bus schedule said the bus would come at 7 o’clock. It didn’t. At 7:45 the first bus showed up and drove us about five miles to Estepona. From there we caught a second bus to Marbella a further 12 miles down the road. Once there we had to wait an hour for another bus to take us to Malaga 20 miles away. Finally in Malaga it was now 11:30, giving us 15 minutes until the airplane touched down. Running late now we caught a taxi and walked into the terminal at 11:50, just 5 hours and twenty minutes after leaving the marina 40 miles away. The guidebook says a bus to Madrid, halfway across the country, only takes 6 hours from Malaga, which would be great if it didn’t take that long just to get to Malaga.

Susy and Al touched down right on time. Al came out to the waiting area to make sure we were there and then couldn’t get past the guards to go back in and get their luggage, leaving Susy to lug the four giant suitcases out to us. The line outside for a taxi was about a mile long so we found a seat inside at the bar and made ourselves comfortable there instead. It had been nearly two years since we’d seen the two of them but once we were talking it felt like no time had passed at all. On a trip like this you sometimes start to worry that life back home is going on without you and you are missing out on things, or it will be weird to be around your family and friends again. But every time we have a visitor things go right back to normal instantly and we’re reminded that some things never change.

We finally made it out of the airport and to the hotel where we parked ourselves poolside and shut the place down. At one point even having to call management and force them to come outside and serve us. It’s definitely the off season here now and with so few guests the place seems to be trying to cut everything out, including the poolside bar. We did get a huge suite for ourselves on the top floor for only a hundred bucks though, so a little lack of service can be excused. Back upstairs that night I trounced Al 3 games to 2 in cribbage. He may dispute these figures, but he doesn’t have a website, so too bad.

Today we walked the beach all day long, stopping along the way for an ice cold swim as well as ice cold beers. In the evening we made our way back to the pool again before finally forcing ourselves back down the beach one last time for dinner.

october 8 2006 : motorcycling around spain
This morning we picked up our Harleys for a few days of riding through Andalucia. We drove along the coast back to Puerto Duquesa to pick up a few things from the boat. Things we haven’t needed much in the past couple of years, such as socks, underwear, and shoes.

Back on the road we drove past the rock of Gibraltar before turning north and heading for the mountains. Along one stretch we saw giant birds nests on the top of the power poles, each big enough for a human to lay comfortably in. We never did see what was up there.

It was Sunday and all along the road we saw restaurants absolutely packed with locals having big family lunches. We stopped in at one and felt at first like we had walked in on a wedding reception, but it was just a typical crazy Sunday.

The roads were really nice and we had a good ride without too much traffic. We saw plenty of crotchrockets throughout the day racing and scraping knees through the corners. One thing we didn’t see were any police and it seemed like everybody knew that they weren’t going to.

We rolled into Ronda a little before dark and after circling the town three times looking for a particular hotel we decided to just park the bikes and walk around to find it. As we were parking a lady came out of the building we were parking in front of and asked us if we were planning on staying at her hotel. We weren’t, but it seemed like it was going to be kind of hard to tell her that we were actually looking for a different place but would like to park in front of hers, so we just said yes. The hotel was actually a restored mansion and turned out to be a really nice place to spend the night. After checking in we walked through town checking out the bridge that joins the two sides of the town across a 100 meter deep gorge, passing by Macca’s, and settling down for dinner in the towns main square. It was a beautiful setting with the sun going down, two extremely old ladies sitting on a park bench next to us, and the bells of the old church clanging away.

october 9 2006 : motorcycling around spain
Today started out pleasant enough. After a good breakfast we were on the road for what the hotel told us was a two hour drive. In motorcycle riding language that equates to about ten hours, staying off highways, lolling around the backroads, and stopping every hour or so for a beer and bar food. The drive was nice, winding through olive trees that covered absolutely every hillside as far as you could see. The trees are evenly spaced and the ground underneath them is smoothed perfectly and doesn’t seem to have a single weed or even a rock, just slightly different shades of dirt, which made the whole scene look like a jigsaw puzzle.

We pulled off the road into a small town that had a castle looming at the top of it. Driving through these small towns is an experience in itself. The people are used to seeing dirtbikes, not Harley’s, so as you slowly wind through the narrow streets everybody comes to their door to see what’s going on. And these bikes are stock, I can imagine the commotion you would cause cruising through on a normal American Harley. After a few wrong turns and turning around, which is a major pain with these tiny streets and smooth stone pavements, we found our way up to the castle. The wind was howling so hard up there I was nervous about the bike being blown over, but we did have the place to ourselves. The castle walls were pretty deteriorated but there was one building left standing that was in pretty good shape and we crawled around in there for a little while taking in the view and getting a break from the wind before hitting the road again.

The next few hours we just cruised along, the sun came out and warmed us up and we found a great little local bar and ordered a selection of tapas. Not sure what we were actually going to end up with they brought us out a selection and they were all great, even the fried sardines. I can honestly say that those were my first sardines ever. They won’t be making my pizza topping list anytime soon, but still, not bad.

After a couple of more hours of driving through back roads amongst the olive trees we got back out onto a busier highway to make the last push into Granada. That’s when Al’s bike packed it in. We knew right from the start there was something not quite right about his bike, it had been running really hot. When we had picked it up we had noticed the pipes were all discolored from being to hot, but hey, it’s a rental bike so what do you want? Anyway, cruising down the highway the whole thing just shut down on him. The electrical system was shot. We played around with the fuses for a few minutes but it was hopeless. We were only about a mile from a turnoff for a reasonable sized town so Ali and I took off to find a hotel and get the rental place on the phone. It took us 45 minutes of circling the town to finally find a hotel since the town was definitely not on the tourist track. I dropped Ali off and went back to pick up Susy. After dropping her off with Ali, who had only been able to leave a message with the rental place, I went back for Al.

Al was all excited when I got there for him. Apparently he couldn’t wait to ride on the back of a big motorcycle with a big man in charge. It took all my strength to hold the bike upright as he climbed on, not quite as nimble as my normal backseat rider is. On our way in to meet up with the girls we decided to stop in at this little bike shop that I had noticed on my previous trips into town. Inside we found two guys, one of whom was working on a little dirtbike. Using every word of Spanish that I have in my vocabulary we eventually conveyed to him that we were in fact not an American gay couple, but that our other bike had broken down on the highway. Once we had established that he dropped everything and we loaded into his big van.

We drove to the bike, popped the windshield off of it so it would fit, and then loaded it in the van. Back at the shop Al and the mechanic set about tearing the bike apart while I went back to the girls to check in. They still hadn’t gotten hold of the rental company, so I just went back to the shop. By now they had performed surgery on the bike and determined it was probably a combination of things, the first and most important of which was a fried battery. The shop didn’t have a new one so we were officially stranded. I then thought to have the mechanic call the bike rental guy. He got them on his first try and jabbered away for ten minutes before handing the phone over. The rental guy was great, he told us to just leave the bike and that he would be at our hotel in the morning with a replacement. The mechanic bill was up to us though. I thought sure we were going to get ripped off at this point but the mechanic only wanted twenty-five bucks. We paid him more than that and said, “Adios.” After amusing the local children with Al’s uncoordinated climbing display we went back to find the girls sitting in the main square, drinking beer and being hit on by the local men.

The only hotel in the entire town it turned out was a dumpy little hostel, not exactly the type of place parents enjoy sleeping in while on vacation but Ali and I thought it was great value at only 35 bucks with bathrooms included. Maybe we’ve been traveling too long. After throwing all our bags in our rooms we walked down the street and almost immediately found a nice local restaurant. I ordered the grilled meat plate and an appetizer. We were all done eating and my grilled meat plate still hadn’t arrived so I began to assume that there had been some confusion when I ordered. But then the waitress came out with a plate that weighed about ten pounds and was piled high with just about every animal to ever wander through Spain. We ordered another round of beers and everyone settled in to watch a grizzly display of human consumption.

october 11 2006 : motorcycling around spain
The next morning we didn’t have much to do while we waited around for our new bike to show up. We sat at a small café and drank copious amounts of coffee before moving to our new perch on a park bench next to the road where everybody who walked by could look at us and wonder what our deal was with bags all over the place, four people, and only one motorcycle. Our new bike finally arrived around eleven and Al was happy to see it was a much nicer bike this time and that it even had some nice noisy pipes for him. We didn’t ride much that day though, instead just finding a nice hotel a couple of hours down the road and lounging around most of the day.

Today we headed up into the mountains. The ride was great and the roads seemed to be custom made for motorcycles with big winding turns and smooth pavement. We stopped at one roadside bar and made ourselves comfortable sitting in the sun outside along the road. While there we watched as an old guy pulled up into the parking lot. The two old ladies with him got out and walked down the road but he stayed behind. For some reason he decided that the car would be better off facing the other direction so he climbed in and proceeded to hit the car next to him twice while completing this 180. Then when he finally seemed to be home free he revved the engine and slammed into the tree in front of his space. Finally completed, he got out, had a quick look at the dented fender of the car next to him and then wandered on in to the bar. The ladies came and fetched him five minutes later and we got to watch as he narrowly avoided more cars nearby, drove over a curb, and revved his engine on down the road.

We also stopped in a little town along the way where Susy decided that a rug would be the perfect souvenir from her trip. Sounded just like something Ali would do, and I think Ali encouraged the purchase. Al dutifully rolled it up as tight as he could, bungeed it down on the back of the bike, and drove on. This was apparently ham country also, and the stores were filled with them. We thought about strapping some of those on the bikes too, but we were out of bungee cords by now.

We only drove about 150 miles all day but must have made at least 100,000 180 degree turns on the switchbacking mountain roads. The road conditions covered the gamut from smooth pavement in the valleys to potholed filled affairs above the clouds. The scenery was the best of the trip and as evening rolled around we finally found ourselves emerging from the mountains down to the coast. Once there we had little choice but to take the main highway and found ourselves being tailgated through every twist and turn for the next fifty miles while we raced along trying to find a hotel for the night.

We eventually found a place in one of those ugly package tour towns that line the coast. After settling in and having dinner in the hotel restaurant we had a good laugh as our waiter informed us it was “impossible” to take our drinks to the hotel bar in the next room. “Impossible,” he repeated three times to drive the point home. At the bar next door we were happy to find a dj had set up for the nights entertainment. We sat down, now drinkless, and prepared to order special bar drinks. But when the dj fired up the song YMCA as his first choice for the night, we decided it might just be best to call it a night instead.

october 13 2006 : duquesa, spain
The next morning was pretty much a race down the coast to return the bikes. We started out by trying to follow the small side roads along the coast but were probably averaging about 20 km/hr and not getting much of a view most of the time anyway, so we hopped back out on the toll road. The coast along here is definitely not a scenic tourist drive. We barrelled along for a little while before realizing that we were pretty well lost. We got off the toll road and made an attempt to get back down along the coast but that only led to more confusion as I somehow managed to lead us five miles up into the mountains instead. So back onto the toll road we went where we finally just sped along until reaching our destination town where miraculously we drove ourselves right through the warehouse district to the bike shop without a single wrong turn. All said, it was a pretty fun little four day outing with plenty of nice scenery, a broken down bike adventure, a bit of local color, many local cervezas, and some high speed highway all thrown in to the mix.

By two o’clock we found ourselves back in Benalmadena lying poolside and feeling like we had never left. That night we packed, played cards, and ate room service pizza and ice cream before saying goodbye.

Ali’s parents left at 5:30 in the morning and Ali and I woke up hours later with nothing to do but laze about until noon when we’d finally be forced to leave and start our epic forty mile adventure home. Four buses and five hours later we find ourselves back at the boat making lists of all the things we need to do in the next few days to get ready to leave again. About the only real pressing issue however is having our engines checked out, aside from that we could probably leave to cross the Atlantic tomorrow if we wanted to.

october 17 2006 : duquesa
Not much going on the last few days. We were back on the boat for the weekend so we weren’t able to get a mechanic out until Monday. Over the weekend we worked on a few small boat projects, fixing a leaky hatch, cleaning and lubing the sail track, fixing a couple of leaky screw holes, rerunning the broken reef line, things like that. Then yesterday the mechanic came out. Now here is where we always run into problems. Trying to explain the symptoms of what has been wrong with your engine is never easy, explaining it to somebody who only speaks Spanish is doubly hard. In this case it was relatively easy to explain, “Mucho blanco smoke.” We mimed what the smoking engine looked like and told him it was smoky for like, “diaz dia.” Ten days of smoke.

The problem though is that the smoke stopped a few days earlier along the coast of Spain and the engine seems to be running fine now. I mentioned that I had thought the problem might have been the injectors but he said the injectors appear fine because they would be smoking if they weren’t. The change in the engine noise had simply been that the air filter had worn out and broken off, a simple fix. There is a small rattle in the engine and he told us that was the driveplate. That was no surprise, since that is the part we had to replace back in Australia, and we’ve known for a while now that it was wearing out again, though it doesn’t seem to be a pressing issue at the moment. Anyway, he poked around a bit and declared that the engine is fine.

Engine number two was the engine that had the problem with getting air in the fuel line every hour or so. Again, I mimed the situation to him and he understood. Our fuel line runs out of the tank through a hand pump bulb, through the pre-filter, then another filter, and into the engine. The mechanic peeked inside, grabbed the bulb, and squeezed. Right away he indicated only a trickle of fuel was getting through. Problem solved. Later on we went and bought the bulb and new fuel line, set it up, and it now appears to be fixed.

We’re not feeling 100% confident that things could possibly have been this simple and that we don’t really have any major issues, but that’s all we’ve got to go by for now. We’ll see how the engines act on the passage to the Canaries.

Other than that we really haven’t been up to much at all. The weather turned to crap immediately after Ali’s parents left and it has been windy, cloudy, and even a little rainy around here since. They still haven’t turned the clocks back for daylight savings time which means that at 8:30 in the morning it is still pitch black outside. Which of course doesn’t bother the locals, who are total night owls. Their eating habits work out great for the two of us though. Since we love to only eat one big meal a day, that being lunner, which is around 3 o’clock. The locals here eat lunch right around that time, so everybody thinks we’re just grabbing a big lunch. Then they all go out again around ten p.m. for dinner. If you sat down for dinner at 9 here you would be the only person in the restaurant.

Now, more or less, we are just waiting around for a weather window to head through the Strait of Gibraltar and on to the Canary Islands. We have to say though that the south coast of Spain is a less than ideal place to be stuck waiting for weather. Along this entire stretch of coast there is no sheltered bay. There is literally not one safe place to spend a night on your boat outside of a marina. And marina costs are the highest we’ve encountered in the entire world. This is the first place we have been charged double because of our catamaran. Generally we are charged 1.5 times the cost of a monohull. Here in Spain this means we are paying somewhere around $70 USD a night. Seventy bucks to park a boat for a day. Definitely doesn’t suit our style of parking the boat and then taking off for a week of inland travel. It’s hard to justify when the boat is sitting there running up a $500 bill while you are away.

We did walk up to town for a grocery store run. We couldn’t believe how much good food they had. It was by far the best grocery shopping we’ve done since leaving Australia. We had gotten our store of foods down to just one plastic container, which meant we were finally eating the really gross stuff. After this grocery store we are pretty well stocked again, back up to two containers anyway, and it only cost us $150 USD. Best of all, we’ve got chili again. Look out hot dogs, you’re in trouble. And more canned meatballs. I’m like Forest Gump, “We can make spaghetti and meatballs, meatballs and mashed potatoes, meatballs and rice, meatball sandwiches, meatballs on toast, meatballs…”

october 20 2006 : duquesa
Still sitting in Duquesa watching the big black clouds roll through. A couple of days ago we took a chance and hopped a bus over to Gibraltar. I had managed to order the wrong size solenoid for the gas tank, 3/8″ instead of 1/4″. Back home this would have meant a five minute drive back to the store, but here it means we’re screwed. There was not one place in Gibraltar that carried solenoids, and nobody had a 3/8″ to 1/4″ converter either. We’ve now ordered the little converter pieces for $4 from West Marine and are having them shipped, for $25, to meet us in the Canaries.

About the only thing worth doing in Gibraltar is taking the cable car to the top of the rock to see the monkey’s and the tunnels. We seemed to have a small break in the weather with slivers of blue sky peaking through. But by the time we got there it was nearly pitch black, windy, and raining. All of which meant the cable car had been shut down for the day. With nothing else to do we started drinking warm Irish beer in dirty English pubs while eating bangers and mash and chicken pies.

Everybody around us was saying things like “bloody weather” and “jolly good pint eh chap?” Something along those lines anyway. Gibraltar may be a tiny spit of land enclosed by Spain, but it is most definitely British. The place has a nice little tourist Main Street where you can buy electronics or perfume, and eat fish and chips. That’s really all there is. Our hotel for the night was more expensive than anywhere we stayed in Spain and was by far the worst place we stayed. We went to bed that night praying for better weather the next day to save our trip to Gibraltar. However that didn’t happen. We woke up to some serious downpours and high winds. No cable car again. We grabbed a $20 meal at Burger King and high tailed it out of Gibraltar, thoroughly defeated.

Back in Duquesa we continue to prepare to leave. We had our jib repaired, it had been losing a lot of stitching and just needed some cleaning up. It seems like every time I read something about sailing there is talk of how the sails rip and get blown out and so on and so on. Yet we’ve never had even the slightest tear in our jib or main. The screecher has had two, but that sail is like a garbage bag so it isn’t so surprising. We’re just surprised people have so much trouble with their sails and we’ve never even had to think about ours. We also topped up the diesel today. After doing that we fired up the engines to charge the batteries. I could have cried. The port engine immediately bogged down. When the mechanic is here it won’t do it no matter what I try, but as soon as he is gone it acts up again. I bled the line again and it’s now been running perfectly for an hour. I really have no idea what the deal is with this thing.

We’re bored, tired of the depressing weather, and extremely excited to get moving again. Visions of the Canary Islands sun, sand, and surf dance in our heads.

october 21 2006 : duquesa
It’s funny how blasé we’ve become about this whole sailing thing. A guy wrote us the other day and said he was laughing about the fact that we didn’t even mention the upcoming Atlantic crossing other than to ask whether anybody had any good cruising guides to lend us. Fact is, we haven’t really given any thought to the crossing. We know it’ll be a long one, we know that we should have good weather and following trade winds, and we know we will need a lot of canned hot dogs. Aside from that what else do you need to know?

I’m sure the hundreds of cruisers lining up to head across with the ARC rally in Gran Canaria would have a different take on it. But I’d also bet that at the end of the trip most of them will say that they could have done it on their own just as easily. Ahhh, the rallies. A couple of hundred boats lining up to take off on a specific day despite what the weather looks like, and then spending their days dodging each other while spending hours tied to their SSB radios telling everybody else where they are. God doesn’t that sounds like an enjoyable way to make a passage. Not exactly our cup of tea, but hey, whatever.

october 23 2006 : barbate, spain
Back in the Atlantic Ocean, where this trip began. The weather cooperated yesterday, as predicted, and we finally untied the lines in Duquesa. We had to depart at 3 a.m. in order to time the tides correctly but it was calm and the lights along the coast lit everything up making for a nice morning. Around 7 o’clock we reached the Rock of Gibraltar. Rounding this point is where the currents would really kick in. The little wind we had was on the nose which meant that when the tide was with us it would kick up waves, and where the tide was against us there would be flat seas. Although it was still dark we could tell we were in the right place as our speed suddenly took off. Occasionally we’d hit a weird spot in the current and the boat would literally lurch to the side and practically come to a stop. When this would happen it was just a matter of getting the boat turned back towards land until getting caught up in the correct current again.

Ali had gone back to bed after leaving and she woke up just as we were getting into the area around the rock. There were ships anchored all over the place, high speed ferries zipping across to Africa and back, and of course the currents to deal with. I felt like I was quite the captain at this point, navigating all these dangers, but Ali came outside and just started laughing at me. Apparently I didn’t look very captainly standing outside with my sweatshirt hood pulled tight over my head and my big fuzzy blue blanket wrapped tightly around me. Winter is approaching quickly.

The rest of the day went well. When the sun finally came up it was easy to see the differences in the water and we had no trouble keeping inside our small band of westward flowing current. Once through the Strait we would have liked to turn SW and head straight for the Canary Islands, but the forecast was calling for four more days of strong SW winds so instead we turned the boat north, and after a 50 mile day we came to Barbate. We pulled into the marina and were directed straight to a berth. Then we checked in and found out it was only $15 a day, compared to the $70 in Duquesa this place was the ultimate bargain, and we were definitely glad we had decided to sail up here to wait for our weather window. The town is a couple miles down the road and the only thing here at the marina is the yacht club bar, which served us up some very large cold draft beers before we called it an early night.

Also of note was that the port engine ran perfectly for 9 hours. I’m still not 100% satisfied, but it seems like the last bleeding, along with an extra turn on each of the fuel lines hose clamps, may have finally done the trick and left us air free.

october 26 2006 : barbate
Still in Barbate, and still waiting for weather. It has really been terrible here with near constant 30 knot winds and rain. Last night sounded like we were riding out a hurricane. However, despite the black skies we decided yesterday we were going a little stir crazy and we’d better do something. So we walked into town and caught the bus to Gibraltar, to try again. It was a much longer 2 1/2 hour bus ride from here, but when we arrived it wasn’t raining. It wasn’t sunny, but it wasn’t raining.

Walking through customs and immigration between Spain and Gibraltar is pretty funny. All you have to do is hold up your passport, not even opened, while you walk past them and they nod. We never saw one person get stopped for anything. Spain is easily the most lenient country we’ve ever visited. We didn’t even clear in to the country while we’ve been here. At two marinas we asked where customs and immigration were located and they told us we didn’t have to see them. You could easily spend years here without ever clearing in.

We immediately caught the bus to the other side of town for the cable car to the top of the Rock. As the cable cars got to the top there was a monkey, actually an ape, sitting on the railing peaking inside looking for any unsuspecting tourist with a loose bag over their shoulder. I read that these are the only wild apes in all of Europe, and they seem to be doing just fine up here on the Rock despite the surrealness of the setting high up above the bustling commercial port. There were babies all over the place and they all seemed happy and friendly.

The view from the top was incredible. It was cool to look down and be able to trace the path that we had just sailed days earlier, through the anchored ships, around the point, and across the busy bay. We spent about an hour up there before one of the really nasty looking black clouds across the bay started speeding towards us. We watched the line of rain race across the water and then were suddenly enveloped in it ourselves. We retired to the bar/tourist cafeteria and waited it out.

This time it passed within an hour and we were able to get back outside to the now soaking wet apes. At one point I reached down and put my hand out for one of the smaller ones who grabbed it and climbed right up on my back. Two seconds later his buddy who had been watching from the roof of the building, and not wanting to be left out, leaped down and landed on me too. The impact knocked both of them off of me and they swung down my arms and to the ground like I was a tree. We spent another hour or so watching them before heading back down the mountain where we already needed to catch the one bus a day back to Barbate.

At the moment the wind is still howling and it is hard to imagine it ever dying down, but according to our weather it will be calming and shifting throughout the day and by tomorrow morning we will finally have our weather window to take off for the Canaries.

october 29 2006 : en route to canary islands
Our weather window looked a little sketchy for the first day, but it seemed like our only chance to get moving so we took it. We were out of the marina and on our way before the sun came up. All was good with the wind behind us at fifteen knots.

Throughout the afternoon though the wind kept climbing and we found ourselves surfing the waves with the wind up over thirty knots. At one point I saw our speed hit fourteen knots, which I am pretty sure is a record for Bum. We had the main double reefed and no jib out. One nice thing about the boat, no matter what downwind sail combination we throw up, she sails straight.

In the afternoon I was outside having a look around when I saw that one of our two forward bimini supports had completely broken off at the weld. We’d had that same weld fixed twice previously so it probably shouldn’t have been a total shock, but it was a little disconcerting considering we had over five hundred miles to go and could no longer use our mainsail.

The main is attached to the traveler which slides along the back of the bimini support, putting a lot of strain on it. With only one forward support left we couldn’t take the chance of the other one breaking off as well, which would most likely result in the entire thing ripping off of the boat. So now sailing with just the jib, we continued on through the night until the wind eventually calmed down, giving us a nice motorsail towards the Canaries.

By evening of day two the wind was down to five knots and everything was quiet as Ali went to bed. Fifteen minutes later I watched the wind suddenly shift forward onto the nose and increase to fifteen knots. I called Ali up and we quickly got the screecher rolled in. Just in time too, as the wind took off to thirty-five knots. For the next hour we bashed along wondering what the hell happened to our nice quiet night of sleep. But just as quickly as it had shown up it was gone. Just a couple of hours later we were sailing along with the screecher and a gentle breeze from behind once again.

I was asleep when Ali yelled down for me to come quick. I ran outside to find the screecher sail dragging alongside of us in the water. Ali had been sitting outside watching a nearby ship when suddenly the sail broke loose. We cut the engine, since we had been motorsailing at the time, and dragged the sail back onboard. It was a good thing that the wind had been strong enough to launch the top of the sail away from the boat and into the water, because the top piece that connects the sail to the halyard is heavy and would have taken a nice chunk out of the topside if it had fallen straight down. It was too dark to see what had happened for sure but it would seem that once again the halyard had chafed through. So now, four hundred miles to go, no main and no screecher.

Today, day three, we have virtually no wind, so the lack of sail choices isn’t making much difference. A nice thing about this passage is that we have enough fuel to motor the entire way, and it’s looking more and more likely we might just have to. We keep telling ourselves that it’s better to have all of these things happen now rather than in the middle of the Atlantic.

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