Back in her element!
We’ll stay here for some days and plan to depart for Morocco followed by the Canary Islands soon.
Month: May 2019
Back in WaterBack in Water
0700h this morning ASCAR lifted the boat. Some dabs of Antifouling were applied. Back in the water we had one leaking hose on a new thruhull. Was immediately fixed by an ASCAR mechanic. Now in the dock of the Yacht Club in Cartagena.
Getting Ready to SplashGetting Ready to Splash
Big cleanup and work day. We might splash tomorrow on Wednesday.
Getting closer to launchGetting closer to launch
Up early morning. With the street sweepers.
Cartagena – Traveling WestCartagena – Traveling West
Dear Friends,
I wanted to write this for a week now. The boat keeps us busy with 10 to 12 hour work days.
This blog entry will be short -more photos than text, which in this case makes sense anyway. Photographing landscape becomes easy with deep blue skies and sunshine. In this region of Spain the sun shines for 330 days per year or so.
We went to the ‘Battery Castillitos’ west of Cartagena. See more under: http://www.castles.nl/castillitos-battery and https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bater%C3%ADa_de_Castillitos
Pretty mountain roads going up and down. After every bend on the road opens another splendid view. Sometimes we just stopped, sat on a rock and soaked the view in. It was a great day!
Cartagena – Traveling EastCartagena – Traveling East
Last weekend we travelled east by car for a little sightseeing. Lunara is in a boat yard and after many 12 hour work days in the yard, we were ready for a little rest and relaxing. On Saturday we drove a short distance to the east and Sunday to the west (separate blog entry coming up later)
A very interesting drive along the port on a winding road uphill, later on a high cliff with great views of the port and the coast line on the other side of the bay, all in-between passing through short tunnels.
Then we entered Escombreras, a huge industrial area and port with refineries, cement factories and left over buildings from mining centuries ago. The landscape is barren and plastered with huge ball shaped gas tanks dotting the hillside for miles mixed with silvery shining pipes in front of a brownish landscape. It’s sci-fi looking, exactly how I would imagine a doomsday settlement on Mars. It was difficult to photograph, wanting to say below does not reflect properly the view.
We off-roaded our Fiat Panda rental car through a silver and lead mining area from the last century. Ruins of an industrial era gone by. We were heading for the beach ‘Playa El Gorguel’.
The beach and bay was scenic. Along the east side of the cliff were shacks. No running water or electricity and most residences seemed to be modest vacation spots. Nearly the whole bay’s entrance was blocked by a fish farm set some hundred meters from the beach. The sand was blackish.
Nevertheless it is scenic, interesting and weirdly fascinating.
Portmán
After El Gorguel we followed the dirt road further east. Portmán was initially a first century roman enclave used mostly for mining. Mining continued into the 1980s. Many hundred millions of tons of mining residuals and chemicals were dumped into the bay. The fishing port, because of all the deposits, disappeared and a new, smaller port was built on the east side of the bay. However, this port is small and the entrance so silted and narrow we could nearly walk over the port entrance.
The prime real estate of the bay and beach area have become catch basins for the open mining deposits and waste which still wash out from up the valley 40 years later. The french mining company disappeared after mining became unprofitable and left without cleaning up the area which they were contractually required to do. The EU and Spain spent 80million Euros since 2011 in the cleanup effort. Still, the little hamlet looks destroyed for one or two more generations of Portmán citizens. As it is, Portmán could have lived of tourism probably better than mining, but not today.
Side note:
Our boat is in repairs, but we are in better shape than below 🙂
That’s it for today. Bye, bye.
Boat Yard Blues SaturdayBoat Yard Blues Saturday
We are at ASCARS shipyard in Cartagena and despite it’s Saturday, the work continues. Quality of work so far is impressive and their willingness to understand what the customer wants is great here. Management speaks excellent english and is always outside on the yard to inspect the ongoing work on all the boats here. Large and small customers gets treated equally well.
I keep it short this morning as I have to return to the yard soon. These pictures were pre breakfast (mine). They start early here!
Below just some photos from ASCARs work
Boat Yard BluesBoat Yard Blues
Boat yards have their Charme. Not necessarily in a warm and fuzzy feeling way, but interesting. That aside, we have some work to do. While the boat is messy anyway, we use the opportunity for repairs we didn’t dare to do in a clean marina.
The Admiral works on our ball bearing sail cars. Those are the devices which connect the main sail to the mast and allow it to slide up and down – or so goes the theory. Up yes, down not so much.
The Admiral cleans, inspects, oils and reinsert the cars onto the track. Very fiddly as the balls don’t want to follow the orders of the Admiral.
I dropped the rudders with the help of a friend. We want to inspect the shafts and ensure that we do not have any signs of damage from stray electrical currents. You might remember we had some wiring errors. We will also inspect the saildrives. All non bronze thruhulls will be exchanged in order to be safe.
We are working at the dreaded windows again. They started to leak shortly after the repair in Southern France. The 1.7m long windows became unglued in heavy weather. Catamarans flex in waves and and the windows are simply too long. We cut them in half and glued the two pieces into the cutout. The cut center rests now on a fiberglas bridge with a 10mm gap. There should be ample room for them to move when underway. The glue becoming undone should be a thing of the past – I know famous last words 🙂
Our crash boxes had water leaking in from the so called dolphin stays. We will reinforce the area with some layers of roving glas fiber mats and should be fine afterwards.
I am heading back to the boatyard, got called and have to break of here.
Bye