Three weeks Back Now

Well, I have been back three weeks now and Audrey has been back for more than a month. I am I suppose properly accustomed to being in the office rather than planning the next passage. It has been quite a struggle to get back into the swing of work. We have however been giving further thought to our cruising plans as well as getting framed enlargements of the better pictures hung on the wall.

This blog has the subtitle of An Attempt to Take Sarah Giddings Cruising in the Med. Well, we have successfully got her to the threshold of the Med and we are now looking at options for the next stage. Our original plan of taking six months to get to Turkey is hopelessly unrealistic - well it would be so if we want to see stuff and enjoy ourselves rather than just rushing on to the next port.

We are also unsure about whether we do want to spend the entire season in the Med given rumours of increased expense as anchorages are gobbled up by expensive marinas and ever more people though the Euro crisis might have an effect on that.

We are also very keen to spend another trip exploring Atlantic Iberia more thoroughly than we did this year. Thus, our current favoured plan is to work our way up the Mediteranean coast of Spain and France before entering the Canal du Midi with a view to wintering in somewhere like La Rochelle. We would then be well placed, in 2013, to revisit the north coast of Spain and onto Portugal. From then, we are really not sure. Planning two steps at a time is probably a good maxim as well.

The CA (Cruising Association) is having a Med Section meeting next week which we will be going to. Our plan is to spend at least part of it picking other people's brains about the best strategies.

If any of the myriad readers of this self indulgent bit of frippery have any suggestions, please feel free to leave some suggestions in the comments.

Testing embedded google maps

View Larger Map

Since Sarah Giddings is now in La Linea, it makes sense to show her there.

Webcam

Turns out Puerto Alcaidesa have a webcam

webcam

We are on the third finger from the left. You can just make her out near the root of the pontoon.

Back in Harness

Well, I have now been back at home for a week. I still dream that I am on the boat at night but now manage to feel the edge of the bed and not leap out to deal with dragging anchors or whatever. That is a relief for Audrey of course.

Getting back into the routine of work has been a bit more challenging but we need to keep plugging away at that for now.

Today was more fun with a run down to Bursledon and the rash purchase of a Rutland 913 windmill. We had a bit of heart searching about it and as Force4 are offering a good deal on the complete kit at the moment it seemed sensible to get it now. We wondered if we should spend the extra ninety quid on the newer 914 but feel that the 913 should be able to provide for our modest needs.

Another purchase has been Lynn and Paul Chandler's harrowing book about their year and a bit in captivity courtessy of Somali Pirates. I am reading it on the tube to and from work. Although you know it has a happy ending it is still very difficult reading and a salutory lesson in how badly the whole thing can go wrong. They are working hard on getting Lynn Rival back in shape ready for more cruising. The book can be purchased here:At Amazon as well as other bookshops etc.

Plans for the future are still quite nebulous but we are currently favouring the idea of heading up the Mediterranean coast of Spain to France and then through the Canal du Midi with a planned winter over in La Rochelle before repeating the Atlantic coast of Iberia more slowly

It is strange being so far away from the boat and not being able to get down to see her simply by jumping into the car. We hope to get down later in November for a long weekend, as much for Audrey to get a look at her winter home and "do" the Gibraltar thing.

I am going to work on getting some sort of online photo album up so can then present all the indifferent as well as better pictures to an advisedly indifferent world.

Reflections on being back have reinforced more than ever the motto I read a while ago that runs: Live slowly, Sail fast

Finally, you will note that I have skillfully found the tick box that allows paragraph breaks to be inserted into text. I will have to see if I need to go back and edit previous posts or if this is a global setting. Thank you blogger!

More Photos

This is the classic image of Gibraltar really. The cruise is now complete!

Here for reference is a picture of Plymouth as we were leaving it two months ago followed by a picture of the Rock and from where we are now.

Much nicer looking methinks!

Where to now?

Some Photos

The method of incorporating photos on Blogger is quite difficult in the dark with a dodgy wifi connection so I will follow past practise and put a bunch up here.

This is a typical street scene in Cadiz

Barbate is famous for it't tuna which they catch using a system called Almadabra which involves mooring very long nets to the sea bed for the entire summer. They are a particular hazard when navigating the straits. Happily the season was over when we went through but there was this collection of impressive anchors ashore.

The Sraits of Gibraltar are one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world - very similar to the Dover Straits really. This is a picture of the AIS screen when a few miles short of Tarifa. For the uninitiated, each of the triangles represents a ship which could be anything from a yacht to a supertanker. It is not as scary as it might seem since there is a thing called a traffic separation scheme which is like a virtual motorway on the sea and I am outside the TSS and in what is called the Inshore Traffic Zone. Big ships don't go in the ITZ. :-)

Passage Update

We have arrived in Gib. Well, La Linea really of course but there is a dirty great big rock towering over me which kind of makes it Gibraltar for me. I have cracked open one of the Betty Stoggs and drunk it. Now, in honour of the other Iberian country we visited I am having a glass of a very nice Douro wine we acquired somewhere. As I approached the marina I saw a few boats anchored and was suddenly grabbed by the desire to spend a night at anchor so I will be going into the marina tomorrow. It feels very nice to be at anchor though it is also a bit odd to have finished the cruise. It will take a little while for all of that to resolve itself. I have no doubt though that planning future cruising will be a good antidote to any post cruise blues. As I approached the Bahia de Algecireas which is a better name than Bay of Gibraltar the Mediterranean was looking tantalising beyond Europa Point. It feels both great and rather strange to have finally finished. The inevitable question now is what next. We will have to decide what to do now but we can decide that over the next few months. The passage round from Barbate was a very long and tedious motor into the teeth of a very strong wind around Tarifa. The RCCPF guide says that it blows more than thirty knots of wind around Tarifa for 300 days of the year! I had a good thirty and for a while even thirty five which is technically gale force though it wasn't a gale as the wind was so localised. The seas did not build up much but there were unbelievably short and steep being almost less than a boatlength. This seriously slowed us up especially at first as we had a foul tide – I had allowed as much time as possible. The strangest thing was when we got past Isla de Tarifa. Two miles past, and the wind had dropped from a 7 gusting 8 to a force six. Five miles past and we had a force 3 and no wind at all in La Linea. It was a relief that I did not turn back as I did consider at one point.