Windy days in La Linea

We had the usual 0400 start this morning to get to Gatwick in time for the Easyjet flight. The flight itself was a bit boring as there was a lot of cloud around. We saw a bit of the Golfe du Morbihan and then nothing till we were approaching southern Spain and even then, there was a lot of cloud around. I enjoyed the landing. The pilot had warned us that with the wind just south of west it would be a bit bumpy. There was a bit of turbulence but nothing too much.

The wind has been blowing very hard though and after a bit of nap we were just getting ready to go to the shops when it started raining. It has been belting down and has also shown a leak around the galley which will have to be found and sorted out.

Still, it is nice to be down here still and now the rain looks like easing off I will go and get some supplies.

Thursday now and the rain has definitely gone. The wind has however been in the north or north west which has meant chilly nights though it is nice and warm in the day. We Sunday to walk out to Europa Point and in an extravagant moment, I bought a long lens for the camera. So far it is great and also quite long as well. 300 mm is really at the limit of being able to do hand held pictures.

We have also acquired two 24 m lengths of rope to replace the halyards but now find that the splicing kit I bought doesn't have a needle for threading the core so another visit to Gibraltar is called for.

Lastly, I started looking at the starter motor on the engine as it has not been working properly as the gear has not been engaging with the flywheel properly. Getting it off looked really difficult as the nuts holding it to the main engine block are extremely tight. On a whim, I tried starting the engine and it worked fine. The bit of banging I gave it as well as a long rest has obviously done it some good. We would still really like to replace it with a nice shiny new Beta engine but will have to wait for redundancy or Mr Camelot to help out there! The fuel filters need changing and I should really change the oil as well but will need to check that we can dispose of used filters and such like.

19/04
Well, we bought two lengths of braided three strand rope to replace the halyards along with a couple of splicing needles. I have managed to get so far with the one designated as the main halyard. The essential process is to pull some of the core out at the beginning of the loop and then thread it up inside the cover. You then repeat the process for the excess cover and voilà! You have a loop. The principle is easy enough, it is just the effort in getting the additional core and cover to sit inside the core above the loop. I did eventually get the core to do what it should but have now ground to a halt with getting the needle threaded down to pull the cover up. There must be some technique that I am missing as riggers do not all have forearms like Popeye.

The wind continues strong from the north west which is making a sail across the straits increasingly unlikely. We could have a great sail to Cueta but then a vicious beat back across a very busy shipping lane.

We may wind up getting the ferry in the end.

We have now purchased a day's wifi here so I will post this. The wind continues howling seven most of the time with a few gusts to eight. I don't think we are going to get any sailing in. Still, it is a nice relaxing time here.

Next visit confirmed

We fly on 14/04 and come back the following Sunday. We left booking the flights a bit late so it was pricier than we would have hoped but it should still be a nice week away and it isn't long either!

More details soon I hope.

Blog Fiddling

Well, more accurately, I hvae been playing with Picassa. Google's online album thing. I have put together an album with a load of photos of our cruise to La Linea.

The link is here.


I'll try and get around to putting captions on all the pictures in due course.

A Couple of Small Changes

The more eagle eyed amongst the legions of followers here will have noticed I have been tinkering round with things a bit. Crucially there is now a list of a few links and a chance to follow by email.

Look out, I may enable ad clicking next and become an overnight millionaire from all the click throughs you will bring here!

The Cruising Wiki

It had to come! I had been toying with the idea of using the Mediawiki software to deliver a cruising guide and someone has of course beaten me to it. Although wikis are fraught with problems as witnessed by the shenanigans experienced by Wikipedia it is a very useful way of collaboratively delivering factual content and is, in many ways, ideally suited to cruising guides.

The real problem is going to be getting the content when out of range of internet providers. We do not intend to carry oodles of sattelite technology such as is carried by the round the world racing fraternity who are able to update their blogs and all sorts from the depths of the southern ocean. Anyway, this project deserves as much support as possible.

Visited Sarah G

Well, we have just got back from a visit and a generally enjoyable time though coming back was just as difficult as last October. We didn't achieve much at all in terms of works on the boat but we had a nice relaxing time and did some more planning.

The view of "The Rock" is particularly impressive at night from the boat.

This year's cruising is now taking shape in a more definite way. We have shied away from trying to make it to Sardinnia and Corsica. Instead, we are going to head back west to Portugal and revisit much more slowly the south coast of Portugal (the bits we liked) and Spain. This will involve about a month of river crawling mainly as we intend to explore up the Guadiana and Guadalquivir. We will then head on into the Mediteranean and work swiftly past the Costa del Sol with a view to finishing up in Cartagena or Alicante.

Whether we return to England or stay aboard is another interesting question still to be decided. It would apparently be quite easy for me to get work in Gibraltar and I would imagine that Audrey would find the same. Of course, we would not be able to live aboard if the boat were in Alicante. Plans are though still quite nebulous in that area anyway.

This trip we first visited Gibraltar to allow Audrey to experience the strangeness of one of Britain's last colonies. We then hired a car and I showed Audrey both Barbate and Cadiz (albeit briefly) It was while visiting Cadiz that confirmed us in our view that we wanted to revisit the Atlantic ports again before making the final jump into the Med out of the Atlantic.

The views over the Straits from the Tarifa Algeciras road are typically spectacular and made a nice picture of Audrey as well.

Congratulations to Marco Nanini still holding second place in the Global Ocean Race and facing a huge storm in Drakes Passage while rounding Cape Horn

Also a huge thanks to Sitting Kitty who looked after Schrodinger excellently while we were away.

Off to Spain soon

At last, we are going down there for a few days. An unearthly start and easyjet from Gatwick but at least we will arrive in the middle of the day. It should be a fairly easy time though. We will mostly look around and hope to start planning the next stage of our cruise. Audrey will also get a chance to do the Gibraltar thing. We have also hired a car so we can do a bit of sightseeing.

On another note, I organised that the monthly charity dress down collection should be for the RNLI. It went quite well and I was happy to drop off around £200 to the RNLI London office. It felt nice to manage to get that much though it is only a drop in the ocean of their £150,000,000 annual budget. For all the myriad followers here, please see if you can give them a bit yourself. They can be found at:

The RNLI

I'll update while we are down there as well.

Happy Sailing for those lucky sods who are already cruising!