Back Aboard and Counting Blessings

It's been a weird time to be living in the USA and having a cruising sailboat in Europe: and so we were quite pleasantly surprised after 26 months of forced dereliction to find our stranded Adventuress in very good shape. True she was beyond dirty on deck: filthy would be more accurate. But although she was quite dusty down below she suffered no damage belowdecks.

We arrived and set to work. The cleaning was arduous but uneventful. There were two things that had caused us to worry: the water tank, and the diesel tank. Happily the water tank and pipes were soon emptied, cleaned, rinsed, and are now in good shape. The diesel was another story: and we will post separately about that: in a nutshell, the diesel was unusable, "uncleaneable", and we had to ditch it and start again.

So now we will sail her back to the USA. Nancy will fly home: her knee and arthritic wrists are not suitable for a long ocean passage; but she will rejoin the ship in the Islands and sail back to Punta Gorda in leisurely coastal sailing mode.

John has three excellent sailors joining him for the passage: in order of signing up:

Werner Brouwer, our Dutch sailing friend, engineer and boatbuilder: Werner is in the middle of building his second boat - a 40 footer whose steel hull he shipped in to his yard: in Holland we met him and Ad, and daughter Anne, on S/V Arwen, his first beauty that was 46 feet.

Jim O'Shea, who with wife Laurie has been living aboard and sailing the US Eastern Seabord on Kismet, an Island Packet 350 for many years.Jim has the advantage of having an identical sailing set up on Kismet as we have on Adventuress, just a bit smaller.

Dan Gray: who rescued a Cabo Rico 38 SV Windweaver, has been sailing also the Eastern Seabord part time with his wife Betsy; and part time at his home in New Hampshire. Dan and Betsy are regulars at the Annapolis Boat Show, where they help with the Lats and Atts booth for Bob Bitchin.

Ok so that's enough intro: here is what you came here to look at!

Admiral Nancy in her element! At the helm (in charge!) and in the pink!

OK so this is NOT about sailing: this is about anchoring. There's this gismo on the bow called a windlass, and it uses a sturdy electric motor to pick up the anchor chain and anchor. The ship's engineer is here servicing the windlass, and about time too!

How the devil do you get aboard when you are a*se - sorry, I mean STERN - to the dock? Well, you use a "passarelle", and if you are silly you buy for 2,000 Euros a custom stainless/kevlar jobby that tells the world you are a silly sailor! But John and Nancy use a rarely seen passarelle: it's a ramp to drive your dirt motor-bike up into a trailer to get it home! (105 Euros, delivered, to Gibraltar!)

So here's a pic to illustrate and celebrate Nancy's Bread on the Water! Thanks, Hayden, for a great Baking recipe for sailors!

                                         

It almost goes without saying that we had a long time to think about what we should change on the boat when we were finally allowed back into Spain. A Boom Brake is used to prevent an accidental jibe and the mast falling down (!) when we are sailing downwind. (Of course, the 3,500nm plus voyage back to the USA down the Trade winds will be downwind.) So here's a pic of our old Dutchman boom brake (top) and our new much beefier Dutchman boom brake. But don't despair: in this blog post there's not much technical stuff about sailing!

Just take a look at the green pea soup into which JFK is daring to immerse himself - and he is not even wearing a Wuhan Flu mask! This was after motoring a couple of miles from the Los Nietos Club, where the skipper just had to get in and take a look at the keel. The bits he could see were yukky ugly!

But he does clean up well.

Uh oh: I feel another technical sailing term coming along: this downwind point of sail is called "Wing on Wing" - and for this you do want a sturdy boom brake!

Nancy is a sailor and can you tell how happy she is to be back on her sailboat?

Here we go with a proud owner boat pic!

Looking west at a sunset....or East at a sunrise?  Clue; we are sailing South, and looking to Port.

And this chap, so I am told, is called a "Rock Star" among sailboat racers: he likes to sail as close to the rocks as he dares!

No prizes for guessing this one; leaving Cabo de Gato at 0720. That's right: sunrise astern.

Nancy the Brave is a demon for the up-close selfies!

And now we celebrate civilisation with a Cafe con Leiche. Tastes divine.

Squid anyone?  These are whole small Calamari and they are reeeally good!

So which end goes in first?

Nancy is practising for the USA Olympic Synchronised Shrimp-Peeling team.

So here we are, not a cloud in the sky, flat water, and sailing almost dead downwind with just the front sail (Jib) unfurled.

Now here's a thing: Nancy relaxing after devouring a Turbot - I believe for the very first time.

And just on the edge of the Old Town is a French style patisserie/boulangerie: we adopted it for brunches.

What a delightful surprise: the old part of the City of Estepona is magical.

In this ancient part of Estepona there are many lovely sights, and here is one of them....

                            

.....and when in Spain, why not enjoy a sensational Lasagne at a classic old Italian restaurant?
 

                                       

And then you burn off about 18 calories riding your stowaway folding bike back to the ship.

So we are now heading over to Gib for a couple of days: then we will reurn to Estepona Marina, which we have adopted as our "home port" before our Transatlantic Passage starting about November 20. Nancy has rightly decided to fly home to USA: and my passagemaking sailors Werner, Jim, and Dan will arrive here in Spain November 17 and 18.

October 23, 2021: Estepona Marina, Spain  36.41N  005.15W

A Forced Stay in Gibraltar

The Fates reared their ugly side in Gib! While helping to ship our dinghy on the foredeck, the Admiral pulled a muscle in her lower back. This on top of the knee recuperation was enough to knock her out of action for ten days or so. We were anchored in La Linea bay when it happened, and so the next day we docked in the nearby marina Alcaidesa so that Nancy could hobble off onto the dock and at least have a short walk. . Here's a pic of the anchorage:

And here's JFK driving the dinghy back from La Linea (with the marina entrance over his right shoulder)....

.....after visiting the local market for all kinds of goodies.

To go with Spanish Rioja wine you need a good selection of olives:

Buying fish and then ....

....having a latte with fresh crispy roll and pate.

In the marina we had the Rock astern, backing up our Stars and Stripes.

After six days in Alcaidesa we moved into Gibraltar proper, berthing at the Queensway marina, which was a pretty place, even at night. In the above pic the big powerboat is hiding the hull of the 135ft sailboat with the illuminated mast - I guess about 160 feet high.

Of course Nancy's back and knee did not stop her from visiting the shops in Main Street, Gib.

And so after spending 17 days in Gib, Nancy was finally fit enough to contemplate entering the Med.
And that is exactly what we are doing in this pic: as we round Europa Point on the Southern tip of Gibraltar, we are officially in the Mediterranean Sea.....

...and so we end this post with one more Atlantic sunset, and send our love and best wishes to all.

Nancy and John

Well Beaten Path.....

......but new stops along the way.  At the border river Rio Guadiana dividing Algarve, Portugal and Andalusia, Spain we went for the first time into the town on the Spanish side, Ayamonte. What a pleasant surprise!  Excellent marina, and a charming small town bedecked with palm tree squares....

...like this one, with its ornamental pagoda in its centre.

Admiral Nancy was quite upset to discover the lack of shearing scissors on the boat! Quite why they had been packed and shipped back to the States is a mystery beyond the comprehension of this scribe. So off we went on a mission to find hair-dresser scissors. What did we do, as we could not possibly explain in our non-existent Spanish? We went into a barber's shop, pointed at the scissors and got out some Euros: The young barber understood instantly, but had no scissors for sale: instead he directed us to the beauty shop around three corners and voila! Here is a happy Nancy flourishing the new weapon she will use on the skipper's mangy locks.

Arriving late into an anchorage - which Nancy claims is all too often - the routine once anchored securely is to have a cocktail and then a fast food dinner out of cans: this was the same old story played out in the Rio Guadalquiver, which leads ships all the way up to Seville. Here is bowtie pasta with Spanish canned mini hotdogs and a can of excellent French ratatouille, garnished with some black olives, sliced green beans, and a pot of sprinkling cheese for Nancy.

And another surprise awaited us: the Moorish town of Rota, in the Northern end of the Bay of Cadiz, was simple, clean and a glimpse into the past. Tight little streets and alleys, with a kempt and charm that even had push bikes instead of Vespas. And no, that is not John on the bike.

Local fresh fish in the refrigerated display: we had the "shark" second from left and it was grilled perfectly.

And after ordering glasses of semi-sweet digestif oloroso Sherry - it was Sunday lunch! - John was keen to tell everything yet nothing about it.

Nancy was intent on showing you this pic: our dinghy newly converted into an amphibious vehicle!  look closely and you will see the grey wheels John has just installed astern, which, when the motor is lifted up in its out of the water position, makes it relatively easy to drag the dinghy up a beach. And when in the water, the wheels lift up and lock. Crafty, eh?

So - finally we hear you cry - a pic of us sailing: downwind on jib alone, through the straits of Gibraltar. Look far left and you can see the Rock beginning to appear, and in the haze on the far right is just visible Africa - the mountains of Morocco....

...which are adorned with the ubiquitous windmills, seen behind this westbound ship.

Here is a closer look at the Atlas mountain that is due South of Gibraltar. The Atlas Range goes some 1,500 miles across North Africa, with the highest peak being Toubkal, at 13,600 feet, in Morocco.

And so in the evening sun we arrive in Gibraltar: This was after a long hop of some 86 nautical miles from Rota. The original plan was to sail just 50 nm to Barbate. But as we rounded Cape Trafalgar (Rule Britannia!) we were having a good sail.  Admiral Nancy was asleep, and so after some quick mental arithmetic the skipper sailed past Barbate, and onwards some 32nm to Gibraltar.
Luckily for him we arrived at 21.18 - twelve minutes before his forecast of 21.30 and still in broad daylight. Which was just as well as no less than six ships decided to leave as we sailed the 6nm into the top of the bay and dropped the anchor exactly where we had picked it up last July.





The anchorage in the Rio Gualdalquiver could have been in the Chesapeake Bay: and so we leave you with our love and best wishes,

John and Nancy
S/V Adventuress
Gibraltar

Sailing is Fun....

...when a new season starts and everything still works! At the risk of jinxing Adventuress, we are happily surprised to report that, after spending ten months at Nave-Pegos yard in Faro, Portugal, the boat is ship shape. We launched on Friday, and here we are on Tuesday, at anchor in Culatra, and ready to go sailing.


So here's a few pics of the re-commissioning:

Note the framed stands and strap downs on the concrete hard standing, which when we first saw them immediately sold us on the Nave-Pegos yard. Also prominent are our three solar panels above the cockpit. One of "Bruce's" men is just finishing up cleaning and polishing the sides, now gleaming, and a couple of hours later we were splashed.

Usually we would stay on the boat for a few days before launch: but with Nancy's new knee it would have been difficult for her to climb up a ladder twelve feet to the boat. So instead we rented an apartment in Faro, which had this view over the town and the Ria Formosa natural estuarine habitat.

Last year we discovered the small fishing village at Culatra: this time around we were not yet provisioned in the galley, so that was an excellent excuse .......

.....to indulge in the local sea harvest.  Here we have a plateful of squid and chips, and believe me those squid are just as tasty as they are ugly! But wait! There's more......

.......next day we tried a Portuguese fish stew, and this is towards the bottom of the feast: hence the already empty wine glass.

Some folks just don't know when to quit: here's Nancy having a fancy dessert, a truffito", with a glass of Liquor Beirao over ice, and an espresso. OK, well, the photo was staged a bit: the glass and espresso belong to John.

And what would our first blog posting of the year be without a pic of the dinghy skipper and Adventuress astern? Note that this was just two days after launch and the decks are clear, the sails are up, the dodger and bimini installed and about twenty checks and tasks completed below decks.

And so we start our 2019 adventure afloat, and we are truly blessed.

Love and very best wishes,
John and Nancy