Baby!

Some of you may have been wondering why there has been no activity on the site or the blog even thought the cruising season has very much started;  I can now reveal that in January we got the amazing news that Carol is pregnant and we have a little one due on the 3rd of September!

This has obviously changed our plans somewhat and needless to say the cruise has been put on hold for a while.  We still plan to continue it at some point and will still spend time out on Kotare, but for the moment we have taken her up to Barcelona where she will stay until next summer.

I will still post occasionally about anything interesting that happens on our trips out, but I am sure there won't be anything to rival the Fornells saga! However, I do have quite an interesting story about the most elaborate way to steal €60.

After Kotare was put back in the water at the end of March at Sant Carles myself, Carol, Helly & Matt flew to Barcelona collected the hire car and drove down to spend 10 days on her with the intention of getting to Barcelona at some point.  The rough plan was the boys would sail and the girls would drive as we had to drop the car back to Barcelona airport at the end of the trip.  On inspection of the weather forecast it turned out we had a 2 day window, starting as soon as we arrive, before a storm was coming in that could potentially last 5 or 6 days.  The decision was taken to get up to Barcelona as soon as we could.  So after two days of very un eventful sailing, with the over night spent in a very average marina in Tarragona, we had finally made it to Barcelona on our third attempt!

We spent the remainder of the week relaxing and exploring some of the highlights of the city, it mostly rained and whilst we had some very good meals we also had a couple of really bad ones!  Beware some of the reviews on TripAdvisor! Matt and Helly left a few days earlier than us and we decided to keep the hire car a bit longer so we could do some more exploring.

On one of our last days we decided to head up Mont Juic to see the view across the city and this is where we were the subjects of an incredibly ballsy con that resulted in us having €60 stolen from us.  I will conclude the story in a follow up post as it is now time to start preparing the leg of lamb we are having for dinner and open a bottle of wine!  

Almost Back In The UK

We have spent the last few days preparing to put the boat up on the hard for the winter which is incredibly bitter sweet.  We are looking forward to coming back and getting stuck into the shoot season and Wyndham, but we are going to really miss the boat, with it being on the hard and miles away from an airport we won't be able to come and spend long weekends on it like we did laster winter.  The sails are off, dinghy is packed away, generator and watermaker are winterised and every rope that is easy to de-rig has been packed up all in preparation for the lift on the 29th.  Once she is out of the water we are going to spend one final night on her and then head to Barcelona for our flight on the 31st, stopping of for a night in Tarragona on the way.  

Enough of the sad stuff, here is what we have been up to over the last weeks!  

After the epic bull running experience we got invited to Mallorca by James & Odile for a week which was a real blessing, at the time we thought my leg was fine and on the mend, but it turned out a few days later, and just as we arrived in Mallorca, it decided to swell up and make every thing but lying flat very uncomfortable!  Fortunately the swelling only lasted 5 days and I am now almost fully recovered.  

When we got back to Saint Carles my mum flew out to join us for a week and we had hired a car to get us around so we went on lots of day trips out into the mountains and found some really cool stuff!  We went to a small village that had to be accessed by a very old wooden car ferry which was powered only by the current flowing down the river it had to cross.  As you will see from the photo health and safety was nowhere to be seen, a pleasant surprise from the norm in this overly bureaucratic world!     

We also visited a Spanish ham factory on the out skirts of a remote village buried deep in the mountains.  They explained the entire process to us and we made some pretty extensive notes so we could try and replicate it back at home!  At any one time they have 32,000 hams either in the curing or ageing stages, and they are apparently one of the smallest producers!  

Our final road trip with my mum was to Peniscola (I know that is a crazy spelling, but try to stay focused) which was a short drive down the coast back towards Vinaros.  We visited there because it has a very old walled village on top of the costal cliffs that was spectacular.  However the highlight of the place was a Jamon bar and the crazy guy that ran it.  Apparently it is the busiest place in the whole town after 6pm, you can see it's success as it owns almost all of the property on a whole street!  After we had finished our plate of ham and a couple of beers Marcus insisted we try some of his rum flamed chorizo, which is not to be missed!

Outside of the exploring it has been a really relaxing few weeks, it's almost got to the point where we feel lazy!  We have to remind ourselves that it's meant to be a six month holiday!

Bull Running

We are still having internet problems and have a had a really nasty stomach bug in the last week which is why i haven't posted for a while.  I will get round to posting on the places i have missed out, but for now I am just going to tell you about the bull running!

We arrived in La Rapita four days ago and found that there was a week of festival on in the town right next to the marina.  this basically entails lots of music, fireworks and drinking until around 5am every day.  However, everyday they also have a Pamplona style bull run through a gated off section of the town and we thought it would be rude not to give it a go.  What a mistake!

We headed in to town for the start at 1230 and had a quick beer with Tom and his family to give us some dutch courage.  At the start line it all seemed fairly undramatic, we were surrounded by other people of varying age, from 10 year old kids to 70 year old men and were thinking whats the worst that could happen!

I decided that it looked safe enough to do with my Nikon SLR and managed to get some pretty good shots right up close to the bulls as they ran past and some of the local kids "Torroing" the bulls in the square they end up in.

We then managed to end up in a small alley with no where to get cover and a bull at each end.  We managed to get around one of them whilst some other guys distracted it and I went back to taking photos.  I had just taken the one below when I realised I was now the only person that wasn't taking cover and made a dash for one of the railings, unfortunately the bull was way to quick for me and managed to knock me off as i tried to climb.  Having managed to scramble to my feet i made another run for it, which was a fatal mistake, the bull was on me in a split second and had me on the floor again trying to stamp on me!  The only thing I could think to do was try to put it on the floor to so it couldn't trample me so I rugby tackled its front legs and brought him down just infront of me.  This gave me a small window to get to the barriers before he got up, which I didn't make!  Thankfully at this point Tom and a few others were trying to distract it and I managed to crawl under the barrier, not the most graceful exit, but at least I was away from 300kg of raging bull!  

Whilst it's a bit bonkers that these things are allowed to go on, I was really impressed with the safety precautions that were in place.  No sooner had i stood up and three paramedics were dragging me off to an ambulance that was  really close by.  I try to insist that i was ok, which i mostly am, but they wouldn't let me leave until they had fully checked me over! 

I now have a very high respect for the old school Matadors! 

Pobla

From Valencia we made the short journey up to Pobla Marina where a good friend of ours keeps his boat On Y Va.  The marina it's self was a little rough around the edges, but it had every thing you could need and the people were super friendly!  It would actually make the perfect marina to buy and refurb, it has a good client base and a lot of Oysters winter there to get round the excessive cost in the Balearics, anyone want to loan me €10m?!

The surrounding towns were all occupied by Spanish tourists, which made a nice change from the "Brits abroad" scene on Ibiza.  It was obvious that the bad times had hit quite hard in this area of Spain, with lots of derelict or half built apartment blocks and quite a few closed down restaurants.  The contrast between the relative affluence of the marina and clear dilapidation of the surrounding tourist areas that have nothing to do with the marine industry was quite stagering.

Unfortunately, we had numerous systems fail on us over the past weeks, so lots of maintenance was required.  Nothing serious, but things that still needed to be sorted none the less, the most annoying of which was the watermaker.  I still think it is a great thing to have and more than likely would go for the same one given the choice again, but they do require a lot of TLC.  The main problem they encounter is the heat, it never stops working because of it, but you get some funky bacteria that grows in the filters and produces some kind of sulfur.  It's not harmfull, but it really stinks and it is pretty gutting to have to ditch 200Lt of freshly made water because of it!  While I am on the subject of heat, I don't think it has dropped below 30C here for the last 4 weeks, I know the UK is having a pretty bad time of the weather so I just thought I'd drop that in!  Not to complain at it, but thank the gods we have air conditioning, it would be nearly unbearable if we didn't;  I just hope the condensation pumps I just had to replace don't give up on us again!

One of the things I liked most about Pobla Marina was the pool club, during the day you could chill and take a dip and at night it turned into a relatively cool bar!  As you'll see from the photo above they stop you swimming after dark though.  I also nearly forgot to mention that Helly decided to make a random appearance after being given some days off work, so needless to say a good amount of cocktails and G&T's were consumed!  

We also had the pleasure of watching the Euro final in a really small bar in the marina.  Those of you who know me also know my hatred of the wretched, ridiculous, played by pansies, followed by yobs "Game".  However, I have had to re-think my position!  The Spaniards that we watched the game with in the bar, and all of the ones that piled in after, were all really cool people.  They weren't your usual UK style thugs and all tried to get us involved in the celebrations as much as possible!  So my re-thought on football is that I don't hate the sport, although they are all still pansies, but I do seriously dislike the majority of the UK supporters of it,  they could definitely learn a bit about how to behave from the Spanish.  

We are still heading up the coast and are now only about 120Nm from Barcelona.  The next post will be on a really ugly place called Burianna!

F1 Aftermath

Valencia was a very cool city, lots of good restaurants and bars a short walk from the marina and even more a short tram ride away.  The marina was a bit isolated, but for the purpose of watching the race it could not have been better.  We had a relatively good view from the balcony that at the end of our pontoon and we watched the start of the race from there, seeing 20 cars roaring down the straight and into turn 9 from less than 100m was pretty spectacular!  From there we headed down to track side where we could get a closer look through some gaps in the fence, that is of course unless you are Jack who, along with 15 other people, found a gap and snuck though to get with in about 5m of the track!  We found the best place to watch it was from up the mast, which was easily high and close enough to see over all of the other boats, stands and various camera cranes!  

View from the balcony.

View from up the mast.

Looking down on the boat.

Needless to say there were plenty of places to party, both the night before the race and the night of the race.  I won't, and probably legally can't, post all of the debauchery that happened over the 72 hours that Matt, Jim and Jack were with us, however some of the highlights and it seems SOP when Jim is involved were: Jim deciding our 6 person dinghy could take 8 and nearly sinking it, when being told by the Guardia that lights are required at night on the dinghy Matt promptly pulling out his phone and activating the flash,  me getting a lift back from the club on the back of a Guarida motorbike round the track and Jacks incredible, but very dangerous dancing!  I think our saving grace was Carol's amazing ability to keep us all vaguely in line, with out her there I am sure we would have managed to sink the boat or get put in jail!  I have debated whether to post any photos of the various partying antics and have decided that it's probably best not to for everyones sake! So instead below you will find a photo of the main culprit, and place of blame for anything irresponsible that happend over the weekend, Starking at the top of the mast.  Incidentally he also managed to coin the phrase Starking which has now been accepted into the Urban Dictionary, so if you are interested in its meaning go to www.urbandictionary.com. 

After the race they opened up the track and we thought it would be rude not to take the scooters for a spin round it.  We also, surprisingly, managed to stay relatively sober on the Monday night which enabled us to go for a sail on Tuesday.  It may seem strange to some, but that was actually the first time since the start of the trip that we just went out for a sail.  We obviously do a lot of sailing, but it is all in aid of getting somewhere, it was very refreshing just to go out for the purpose of sailing!  On the way back we anchored off the beach outside the marina and went for a much needed swim, the whole weekend the temperature didn't drop below 32C.  Crazy Jack, who was yet to make a proper appearance, was suddenly awoken and repeatedly hurled himself from the bow in any nature of spin he could muster!  

 Jack in the pits.

Matt on turn 8.

Crazy Jack inverted.

It was a great weekend and I would highly recommend anyone with a boat near Valencia to get it booked for next year, we found that the price of the marina for 7 days over the F1 weekend to be cheaper than we are paying in most of the other marinas further up the coast!  We are now further up towards Barcelona, where we are planning on wintering the boat.  So far we have stopped at Pobla, Burriana and Castellon, but I'll blog about those in another post!  

Valencia F1!

We arrived a few days ago, just before a really strong patch of wind came through and after having to motor in a 1m swell hitting us in the side the whole way!

We have got a pretty sweet spot with a partial view turn 9/10, the photo shows the view of the bridge looking from the back of our boat. About 100m away there is also a balcony that we have access to with another pretty decent view! The sound is incredible an the atmosphere is great, we have never been in a marina where all of the boats around us have people on them and there all here to have the same fun!

Jack has just landed, Matt is about 30 minutes out and Jim is arriving on a flight from Munich after having to take four others form somewhere in Africa at around 1730!

We did a €400 euro food and drink shop yesterday an have enough wine, rum and steak to immobilise an army!

Should be a great weekend!

Main Land

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while, not really sure why!

We are currently on our way from Ibiza to the mainland on a very calm and windless Sunday morning. It's only about 50Nm and we should be there just after lunch time.

In my last post we had just let a very pleasant Dutch couple raft to us while anchored in Portinax. Having both boats held by our anchor presented no problems at all and we spent most of the evening chatting with them over a few glasses of wine, recounting our various sailing stories! They left for Mallorca early the following morning and were headed from their to Corsica. They had what seemed to be a pretty cool arrangement with the co owners of the boat; they would spend 3 weeks sailing it from the Spanish mainland to Corsica and then the other couple would spend 3 weeks sailing it back!

From Portinax we headed to Formentera, which was very beautiful, we spent 3 nights anchored just off the part of the beach where the Shark Restaurant is on the west side of the island. We never actually ventured ashore to check it out as the reviews online said it was very expensive and you had to book a table well in advance.

The weather started to come in a bit on our third night so we decided to go and check out St. Eulalia and spend a few nights in the marina there to restock and pick up Helly. What was meant to be a short stay ended up being 10 nights due to the still very un settled weather. The town was pleasant enough and had every think you could want, including a great bar with half price cocktails from 5-8pm, but it lacked any real charm. Maybe we have been spoilt by places like Soller and Mahon!

As soon as the weather settled down we headed out to our chosen departure point on the west of the Island and found a great bay called Cala Tarida. Our first nights weather prediction was in the early 20's which meant a few alarms were set to check everything was ok during the night! From then on it went beautifully calm and rather than staying our planned one night we ended up there for three! We also experienced what I think was a small squall; one minute there was 5knts of wind, but we noticed some white caps appearing on the horizon and then all of a sudden we were having 20knt gusts. It only last about 25 minutes and we put it down to one of those strange Med things as the forecast was predicting nothing.

So our Balearics tour is now over and we are making our way to Valencia for the Grand Prix and from there further north to see what France has in store for us!