It’s Autumn here. The weather is windier, fogger cooler, especially in the morning and evening, however there is summer at noon.
Unfortunately, we are still near Gibraltar in Spanish waters. Time will pass and the weather will just become wilder. We hope we can leave on Tuesday, there are encoring signs. The ship had to be craned out of the water; there was a little trouble with the rudder. It has actually stopped now but the factory says it’s too risky to get started without checking it. Especially that you can’t stop anywhere on the go: Morocco has closed its borders.
So far we have been sailing in the Mediterranean, and the ship was prepared for that as well. Now that we are leaving this area and going out to the ocean, changes are needed. These are easier to do near Europe due to delivery times and costs. We are now in La Linea de Conception, next door to Gibraltar, in the Spanish port of Alcaidesa. Various works have been taking place here since the beginning of August. Slowly a month ago…
We planned to arrive in the Canary Islands by the end of August, the beginning of September. However, the tasks required for ocean navigation in La Linea are progressing more slowly than expected.
We spent a few days of in-depth rest and cultural recharge a week after our arrival in Gibraltar. We visited Ronda, which is beautiful; we visited the breathtaking Alhambra fortress in Granada. Then, after another week of strenuous work, we also peered into Africa: we sailed through Ceuta for a day. Katrina was already with us on these trips, joining us from England for a few weeks.
There is a lot of work to be done on a ship all the time to assemble, repair, and transform. There are plenty of options to choose from when deciding what will be the next task we will solve. The safety items are the primary concern then all the other items on the list. Everyone feels good when there is order on the boat, it’s easier to keep order within ourselves, so we constantly pack boxes… Now we put everything that just doesn’t have a final place yet in our cabin and avoid it, unpack all day if something needs to be taken out, e.g. a pound of flour or a bag of rice from the floor. Of course, there were also plenty of packages these days that included components, electrical cables, or safety equipment for the installations.
Work is still under way in several areas. The most important thing is to add to the ships rigging. To do this, among other things, two rails more than 6 meters long had to be screwed to the mast. Due to the drilling, the aluminum chips covered everything, so we covered the windows to protect them from scratches. After each work phase, we eagerly vacuumed with the loaned industrial vacuum cleaner and switched to another pier in high winds, away from the other boats.
Satellite internet and telephone (Iridium Go) installation, antenna cabling. Place additional solar cables into the rear cabin wall, install another solar charger behind the cabinet, replace charging cables thicker. Finding the source of water that appears from time to time at the bottom of the ship : sweet or salty? Wiping, drying things, unpacking. Some of the storage spaces are in the floor, and what comes in contact with the bottom surface can get wet. That’s why we wrap everything we put in there so you don’t get soaked. We are preparing for a trip to the Canary Islands.
In the meantime, the kids and ourselves need to expel energy from time to time, to take a walk, or to scooter. As in any household, you have to wash, cook, clean, earn money, do the shopping… Domi works a lot, everyday has corporate meetings and a lot of work beyond the tons of tasks related to the ship. The large monitor, on which he works in the middle of the ship, is cleverly attached to the navigation table so that he doesn’t always have to unpack it while sailing if there is a risk of wave or tilt. The “chair”, which is more like a bench, is still waiting to be redesigned to be at the right height and relieve waist injuries – Domi spends a lot of a day (average. 7-8 hours) leaning towards the monitor. If we were to raise it by 10 cm, it would be much more comfortable. We plan to incorporate a freezer into this because right now there is only one very small one in the top of the fridge.
A couple of days ago we received an Amel 50 boat with three kids. They had just returned from their one and a half to two-year Earth orbit (they went with WorldARC). We talked for a while and it quickly turned out that we had written to them 2 weeks ago on one of the boat community sites. The captain is Hungarian and his wife is Spanish. They have three sweet children who were very happy with our daughters, playing together, scooting together… there was great happiness all around because Boró and Kati have not really been able to play with other children since March. Here in the marina we saw several other boats with children, we also talked to a Swiss family and the children played together a few times.
