Today at the Beach



Found this rose on the beach. Looks like a proposal gone wrong 🙁

Sometimes I would love to know the real story behind things like that.Rose on the Beach-1

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Good Bye GibraltarGood Bye Gibraltar

A mystery flower bouqet floating by our boat on the evening before we leave.

A little heavy hearted we left Gibraltar, heading for Tanger, Morocco on May 27.

We had a very good time in Gibraltar. Both of us were having a cold, limiting our urge to explore a bit. Nevertheless, we had wonderful experiences here. We had some excellent recommendations, but couldn’t follow through. All rental cars within a reasonable radius were rented out on the weekend. The Tio Pepe Sherry winery or the white horses and several other great attractions have to wait until next time.
(Babak, thanks for the recommendations)

Passing the border from Spain – our Marina was on the spanish side of the bay – you got right away the good old England feeling. We lived near London in the early 90s. The border crossing had the oversized sockets, a red British mailbox, red phone booth and a bobby controlling the traffic.

But before we view more pictures, I must mention our personal highlight of Gibraltar:

Without doubt, this was our mid afternoon lunch in a restaurant on the ridge of the Rock of Gibraltar. You ride up there with a cable car. If you feel like it you can hike up there. It’s 750m altitude difference 🙂

Anyway, the cable car it was and a short walk to the restaurant. In the relative narrow dining area you will see the Mediterranean sea and through the other window the Bay- and Strait of Gibraltar. Food was excellent and very reasonably priced for such a prime location. It was a moment were you lean back, look 40miles into the distance and simply feel blessed.

View from the restaurant
Incredible view

Cable Car Ride

Oh no, tourists 🙂
Beverly Hills style! Houses are cascading down the Rock. From above the pool down to the lower level these houses have 3 or more floors!

The View!

Bay of Gibraltar, Med on the right

Point Europa

Neanderthals
In Cartagena we were impressed by its 3000 years history. Gibraltar goes way back over 40000 years. The “capital” of Neanderthals was here. Many caves with relics were found in Gibraltar. This was during a period when the sea-level was 100 meters lower than today – the Ice Age.

A lot of interesting information is on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthals_in_Gibraltar

By Charles R. Knighthttp://donglutsdinosaurs.com/knight-neanderthals/, Public Domain, Link

Next time in Gibraltar, we’ll visit the Ice Age museum to learn more about that period:

Ice Age Museum of Gibraltar and other heritage sites

What would Gibraltar be without its monkeys

The little fellow bending over was coughing all the time. Maybe having a cold like us?

Good Bye to the Rock

Odds and ends

You cannot have too many fenders. Just wondered what is protected here. The pontoon or the boat?

Underway from Roda de Bara, Spain to DeniaUnderway from Roda de Bara, Spain to Denia

Initially we planned to sail straight to Cartagena, Spain which is a 48hours+ trip. The weather forecast made it wise to to split the journey into two legs. Wind and waves for the second night were not what we consider nice.

I am writing part of this underway update during my night watch. It’s midnight right now (local time). By the time this blog update is published we will be in Denia.

The wind is variable from 2kts to 8kts. We have the port engine running.

It’s a very quiet watch with occasional commercial traffic. I prefer night watches with some action, as it is so much easier to stay awake.

At the moment one vessel is overtaking us. “Atlantic Island”, a small cargo vessel is catching us from behind with a 3.8kts relative speed. You can see him near the 3nm ring on the radar

But back to the beginning. In the last days before our departure we finally got some of the spare parts we needed. In the end we stayed 4 weeks in Roda de Bara and were very happy about the location, not so happy about the waiting. 

Roda de Bara

The marina facility is in good shape. The people in the marina and Capitaneri are very friendly. We met some cool liveaboards on our dock. And Francis from the local chandlery is a gem. We will return one day.

We explored the nearby  coastal town of Sitges, which we highly recommend, see our earlier post.

We also visited a large Cava winery. Now, for those who judge Cava by what they can buy outside Spain, please reconsider. Let me encourage you to try again when you visit Spain. We saw the cellars of ‘Freixenet’. The 1910 brickstone architecture of the vinery is set in a nice landscape and felt inviting.

Cava wine cellars. We visited Freixenet with our friends Angelika and Thomas.

Cava is the Spanish equivalent to Champagne. Beyond the budget product made for export they produce excellent brut sparkling Cavas of many varieties. Freixenet’s reception has wine tasting booths with sofas in a round setting for your group or family. Together with some plates of acorn fed Iberico ham and other tasty snacks you get a great combination to try.

Back to the boat and sailing. This morning, hours before leaving, I reinstalled the autopilot controller in the engine room. The generator is decommisioned at the moment and will not be used on this trip. Beyond the issues I found earlier, which help explain the constant overheating, I researched the problem further and believe now that we whole cooling/water supply installation is insufficient to run our genset in a healthy mode.

We epoxied yesterday the mounting plate in the engine room. Today we can mount the autopilot controller box in a solid fashion.

Epoxying the Mounting Plate, helped by our multi purpose boat hook.

And while being at it, I filled all the little holes in the hull, drilled for unknown reasons by unknown technicians.

Epoxy work space

Pictured above the epoxy shop on our outside dining table. The Admiral loves it when I use here kitchen gadgets like the electronic scale for work like this.

By now we are underway to Denia. After leaving the dock it typically takes an hour to clear the deck from fenders, lines and gangway, including making everything sea-safe and hoisting the sails. 

Our heaviest docking line. The Admiral is not on friendly terms with the beast – understandably.

Then we further waterproof the boat from above. From an aerial view our boat looks a piece of art from a trailer park. Admiral Christo @ work!

Doubling up on duct tape. Just to be dry if the weather deteriorates.

The story is that one top window started leaking again. Duct Tape is our new friend. When I retrieved a new roll from the locker I realized that this was roll #3 which means we had already duct-taped 100meters on our boat. Later analysis in port showed that the window cutout in the deck is not 100% straight and even. When the boat flexes in waves the silicone glue must compensate the different movements by stretching. With an uneven thickness, ergo being thin in some areas, the thinner part of the silicon glue overstretches and detaches from the gelcoat and ….. we are leaking from top.

Afterwards the Admiral unfolded her favorite chair on the front deck and read a book in the sunshine.

Early morning the next day, we crossed the deepest part on this trip -1276m or 4200feet.

Deeper is better for us. It means less fishing vessels and typically calmer seas compared to what it would be in shallower waters.

Later in the morning a pod of dolphins visited us for 15minutes. They swam and played around under our bow. I am not sure, but it looked like they rubbed their belly and back on the soft roundings of the bow, all while we were cruising along at 6knots

Breathing out.
Hi Flipper!

The Admiral was off watch and sleeping, so I did not want to wake her up. Last time I did this, she came out and the dolphins were gone. After a while looking at this beautyful scene under our bows I caved in and woke her up. The moment she came out – quite excited and in PJs- she could see only one dolphin far back in our wake. What shall I do next time?

As we approached Denia the ship traffic increased. See the radar from 10miles out

Denia is a ferry port and home to a small fishing fleet. The ferries go mostly to Ibiza and the Balearic Islands. Some are quite fast. When you see them on radar or get the AIS warning things happen fast. You can barely see them at 2mi away, but with a closing speed of 30kts you will be in their way in 4 minutes!

The port entrance of Denia is a narrow channel which is easy to navigate in good weather. When we left on the following day it looked quite different and more challenging.

We are already docked

Why we split the trip into two legs you can see here. The weather we wanted to avoid begins to roll in an hour after our arrival.

Weather coming from the Southeast

The marina is nice but pricey. The views are great, especially towards the fort. With sunshine it must be beautiful here.

In the evening we took a small free ferry across the port to go to the old town for dinner.

We found a nice grill restaurant. The food was freshly grilled in the center of the restaurant, protected by glass screens and equipped with good ventilation. Food was really tasty and the local Spanish Rose was excellent.

Everything got served perfectly fresh from the grill.

Tomorrow we’ll get up late and prepare to leave around 1400h heading to Cartagena. More about this in the next underway update.