LIFE: Part 2

Posted from Sevilla, Andalucía, Spain.

In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

In 2011 we sailed the ocean blue. When we set off we had 3 GPS’s, detailed charts, daily weather forecasts, plus historical data on the best times of year to travel, and the best routes to take. And then we had radios, liferafts, EPIRB, and watermaker as backups.

He, along with two other ships, departed from Seville to sail around the world in order to find a route to India that avoided the Cape of Good Hope. He knew the world was round (though many doubted him), but he had no idea how big it was. Well, maybe he had some clue, based on how far around the world he figured they were when they went to the orient.

Whatever the case may be, he set off with no charts, no weather forecasts, no idea of trade winds and current patterns, and no idea how long the voyage would take, and thus how much food and water to take.

Think about that for a moment.

Puts it all into perspective. Even after the trade routes were established, as many as one in five ships never made it across the pond.

It was, of course, that epic journey that basically made Spain, and Seville especially. From that day, for the next 200 years, they OWNED the new world, and all the trade that came through it.  Which included heaps of gold and silver that passed through the Torre del Oro on the banks of the Rio Gaudalquivir:

The result is a fascinating historical city. Everywhere you turn there is evidence of the heydays of the 15^th to 18^th centuries. Huge baroque palaces and countless churches, including the word’s largest cathedral:

 

 

 

Inside these they are just filled with heaps of gold and art, all in the elaborate baroque style.

 

Plus, of course, the tombs of famous people, like Christopher Columbus himself.

Even the art museum is a work of art in itself:

As well as paintings, there is also bas-relief (sort of a half-way house between a painting and a sculpture):

And even some guy with a lip-ring that seems to actually join his lips together. Some of today’s punks could learn a trick or two from him, I reckon:

Underneath all the baroque and catholic stuff is, of course, the legacy of the muslim Moors who lived here until they were kicked out by San Fernando. This is said saintly king:

(plus a very handsome couple of tourists).

Right next to the Cathedral are the three royal palaces. These range in style from original Moorish, to “in the style of the moors”, to Baroque.

It seems that one of the kings preferred the Moorish style of decoration to the Christian, so he had his  palace built accordingly.  This was during the time when the moors were still allowed to live in the city, before they were finally expelled at the beginning of the Inquisition.

Inside the palace gardens is a musical organ that plays music once an hour, operated entirely mechanically b

 

And also a ‘drunken tree’. You can just see that the lower part of the trunk bulges out. When it rains, that bulge gets bigger – as much as 2 or 3 times the diameter of the normal trunk – like a beer belly (hence the name) or, more accurately, like a camel’s hump.

Apart from the monuments, the city itself is pretty cool.

Naturally we had tapas. Now, you know how when you go to a restaurant the best dishes are always the starters? Well, the whole concept of tapas is that you eat only the starters! I.e. you order two or three dishes each, rather than a single main course. The range of dishes is huge. We had squid stuffed with roe, tenderloin steak with Roquefort cheese sauce, tenderloin with port wine, chicken breast stuffed with bacon and almond sauce, and even baby eels:

We also went to see a flamenco show. I didn’t realize how much tap dancing that involved. Don’t know how she avoids tripping over here dress.

 

The streets in the old city are very narrow, often with shades way up high to keep the sun out. Now is apparently high season, as in the summer it gets over 40deg.

Many streets are pedestrian only, but others, no wider than the one above, allow cars through (just). Plus there are lots of motorbikes, bicycles, and horse-drawn carriages.

To keep the houses cool, the ancients used window shades that would be wetted, thus cooling the breeze as it entered the house:

Along the way, Ceu was accosted by some gremlins.

In 1929 the city put on a huge exposition, and built the Plaza del Espana which is enormous,

along with an even bigger botanical garden

Just a little way from the cathedral, but still within the old city walls, is a brand-new and very controversial building called the Metropol Parasol:

Many people think it is out of place in the historical city, but I thought it was cool.

Underneath it is an excavation of a roman villa.

And it has a walkway across the top:

Three days is all you need to visit the city, and it is very easy to get around as everything is within a short walking distance. We recommend the walking tour to get acquainted with it. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit here.

This afternoon, when the tide changes, we will head back downstream towards Cadiz.

 

 

Posted from Rio Guadalquivir, Spain.

Well..Sailing through the river was different from being at sea. The scenery through the 40 miles of the river was very different.

We started off through some very flat territory that looked almost like Holland. Gradually it became a bit more treed and then we started to see some hills inland.

We began at 2pm, just about at the turn of low tide right down at the entrance to the channel into Bonanza. The river is wide and easy. The channel deep.

Along the way we passed numerous fishing boats that looked like seaplanes with their booms out on each side. Many of them were junk, some were still operational, though often it was hard to determine their state.

We thought we would see more traffic, but saw only one tanker that passed us on the way up, and then met us again the next day as they were coming down again.

Most of the way we motored, of course. But at times we were able to put up the jib to give us an extra boost. Of course then the wind would shift and the river bend, and then we would have to roll it up again.

Once the trees started we saw lots of birds (almost as many as in the Pantanal), and of course the usual cows and horses. But no alligators.

At 7pm it was getting dark, so we anchored along the side of the river at a spot that was a bit wider. That enabled us to do just the one anchor thing, which is a lot easier than two. We watched another spectacular sunset as huge fish were leaping two feet into the air. None leapt onto our boat, however, which would be the only way we would ever catch them!

The next morning we set off at 8am and got in a couple of hours before the tide changed. We then waited six hours for it to change again, and set off just before 4pm. At that time the tide was still against us a bit, but we wanted to get to Gelves before dark. It turns out that on the river the tide has 5 hours of flood, and 7 hours of ebb, so the return trip should be easy!

Just before Seville, the river branches. To the right are some fancy bright blue cantilever bridges that mark the entrance to the Canal de Alfonso XIII. This is the canal that runs right through Seville. However, it is a big procedure to actually get through it – it involves some locks, and bridges, and people who have to open bridges for you.

So we took the left hand branch. About a mile further up here is a little town called Gelves, with a tiny marina, and a nice place to anchor. Just beyond that is a low bridge, so that is as far as you can get anyway.

This is the little port of Gelves. It proved to be an excellent place to anchor, with easy accessibility to Seville by taking the 140 Bus right into town center. The return bus leaves from exactly the same stop as the one at which one gets of in town.

We stopped there and went ashore. It was about 6:30 when we arrived, so that put our whole trip at about 7 ½ hours. Doesn’t seem to be much there, actually, but we did find a small supermarket, and right outside the marina is a café where we had some lamb chops for dinner and could finally use the internet.

Tomorrow we will go and explore Seville, which is just a bus ride away. We will update this when we have some new pictures.

Posted from Bonanza, Spain.

After being up half the night with me being sick with stomach cramps, we then arose with the dawn and set off from our anchorage outside the Guardiana river. The wind was a gentle 10 kts from the north, so we hoisted sails and glided straight towards a spectacular red sunrise.

The forecast, and our expectations, were that pretty soon the wind would shift to easterly, and then swing around to the west as the day progressed. This had been the pattern for the past several weeks, and was in the forecast from Windguru.

Having said, that, past experience also showed us that the forecasts for this area were almost never accurate, and usually about 100% wrong.

And so it was today. The wind did indeed fill in from the east. On starboard tack we were now headed about 30 deg to the north of our destination. Since I expected the wind to veer, I decided to put in a tack now, so that when the wind shifted, and we tacked later, we would sail a much straighter, and therefore shorter, course to Bonanza.

I laid in a waypoint where I expected to tack.

Ha!

The MOMENT we reached that waypoint, the wind did indeed start to shift

The OTHER way! Instead of heading us, it lifted us, until now we were sailing 30 deg south of our destination. And with it came some big swells. That was a 30 deg windshift in the wrong direction. What could we do? So we sailed along on our new lifted tack and prayed that the wind would either lift us another 30 deg, or else go back to where it was before.

Instead it disappeared totally.

So now we had to motor.

About 25 miles from the destination, in the middle of a flat calm, we heard a weather report warning us of force 6 winds in Cadiz. Hmm.

10 miles later the wind suddenly filled in from the south east and rapidly increased to 20 knots. I guess this was the wind that Cadiz was getting. It was a nice breeze, and a nice direction – 60 deg off our starboard bow. Of course on starboard we couldn’t hoist the mainsail because of the broken shroud, but still we could do almost 5 kts without the motor, sailing straight down the rhumb line to Bonanza.

And then it started to head us again. Tighter and tighter. Our speed dropped, so we started the motor again. Then we had to start bearing away. Now we were sailing 10 deg below (North of) our course.

Finally, 5 miles off we dropped the jib, aimed for Bonanaza, turned on the second engine, and just pushed straight into the headwind and ebbing tide.

At 11:30pm we reached the entrance to the river channel and decided to drop anchor right there. It was sheltered water, so we didn’t see any reason to spend another hour going up the river to look for an anchorage further in.

All in all it took us 15 hours at an average speed (to cover the 52 miles as the crow flies) of just 2.8 kts. I reckon if the wind had done as forecast, of if we had known what it was actually going to do, we could probably have saved at least an hour, if not two, by going the right way.

Ah well. At least the night sailing was beautiful – heaps of bright stars, and then a spectacular blood red huge moon rise.

Tomorrow, we will probably visit Bonanza briefly to do some shopping, and then after that do a two day river ascent to Seville.

Posted from Aground at Culatra, Portugal.

Well, we aimed to leave out the east end of Culatra first thing in the morning on an ebbing tide. We almost made it, but then decided to take a nice coffee break on a private little sandy island. Well, it became an island about half an hour after we beached on it.

And then we were joined by a couple of tourist boats who also wanted a day trip to a deserted island. They were taking pictures of us too. I guess they thought it pretty cool that we could just drive our own boat up to the sand like that.

We even had some workmen arrive with shovels. I thought maybe they were going to dig us out, but it turns out they just wanted to load their boats up with free sand to take back to the plant nurseries. Here’s a picture. Except this is a fisherman who stopped to let his dog have a pee. Actually, if you look at the boat in the background in the picture above, you can see that they even arrived with their own backhoe on board!

A few hours later the tide had gone all the way out, and then back in again, and we were afloat again. Interesting eating breakfast on a 15 deg slope. But then again, I guess monohull sailors do that all the time!

So by the time we got going again it was a bit later in the day. 12:30 in fact. We headed for Ayamonte, 27 nautical miles to the East.

Then we read about the tides in the morning and decided that would be a pain if we were to get going early. It seems that with the current in the river creating a lot of rough water at the river entrance, we would have to leave at high tide, which is 4am. Didn’t fancy that idea at all.

So then we headed for Tavira (10miles short of Ayamonte), but came to the same conclusion about that.

So then we did a trial anchor just outside Tavira and concluded it was fine. The wind had picked up with a nice sea breeze, so we decided we would sail another three hours down the coast and anchor off the beach outside of the Guardiana river (Where Ayamonte is located). Actually, we went a couple of miles further down, just outside some small harbor called Punta Moharra. Not too bad. A little bit of wave action, but beats having to get up at 4 am.

Tomorrow we will head for Bonanza (the mouth of the river that goes north to Seville) and see if we make it before dark.

Who knows where we might end up.

Did you enjoy the beautiful picture of our boat at the beach? Yes that was on Noel’s last blog. The truth is: I was sitting in front looking for shallows and Noel told me it was very deep there, over 5m he said. So I came and sit at the helm with him and within seconds I looked to my side and saw the sand.

Oops! Too late.

The current was so strong and tidal was going like crazy, within minutes it was a little island.

Because Noel gets more on the technical side of things, I must explain. To my family and friends that don’t sail: this is not our usual way to get to the beach! We normally Kayak swim there from the boat or even taken the dinghy.

In the meanwhile we enjoyed our time there while waiting for high tide to lift us up. The boat was going further and further uphill as the tide went out, it was impressive.

I put some chestnuts roasting, (I hadn’t tried the chestnuts I bought from a local in my hometown) I got in the dinghy took some pictures and even got to chat with some fisherman. Little did we know that what it looked like our own private little island happened to be a popular place to visit at low tide!

 

Yes, I finally got around to going up the mast to measure the standing rigging. The rigging is now over 10 years old, so due for replacement. The problem with stainless steel rigging is that you get crevice corrosion, which means that the steels gets eaten away in the areas where you can’t see it – down the cracks in the swaged terminals, for example. And then, when you least expect it, the mast falls down.

Not what you want.

So, in addition to regular inspections looking for those tiny cracks, it also means you have to replace the rigging by calendar dates.

So, up the mast I went again. Took me all day. And just as well we are planning the replacements, as I discovered a huge crack down the whole length of the swage terminal right at the top of our upper shrouds. It definitely wasn’t there last time I looked, and it definitely is there now.

So, as a temporary measure, I have hooked up the spinnaker halyard in parallel with the starboard shroud as a backup, and for now we will avoid sailing on starboard tack.

The plan is to use Dynex Dux for the rigging. This is Ultra High Molecular Weight Poly Ethylene (UHMWPE) (Dyneema, Spectra, Amsteel – they are all the same) that has then been pre-stretched at high temperatures. The result is a rope that is twice as strong as steel for the same diameter, has high chafe resistance (loggers drag trees, and fishermen drag nets onboard using this stuff), almost no stretch and very little creep. With a coating on it is also good for at least 10 years and probably over 15 years in the Caribbean sun (test for that are still ongoing).

It is also a lot lighter, and can be easily lashed and spliced. The only thing to avoid on it is sharp bends, so large radius thimbles need to be used when making eyes in it.

And, I believe, these days it is pretty much the same price as steel.

So, we shall see! I will keep you updated.

In the meantime, we are now on our way to Faro, via Albufeira and Vilamoura. There we shall be joined by my business partner Darren and his lovely wife LeeAnne. They will probably be with us for a week or so, and then we might jointly go inland to see some other bits of Europe. We shall see.

Last night we were anchored outside Albufeira, which was very pleasant.

Today we motored the 6 miles in flat calm to Vilamoura and anchored outside the beach there. We shall go ashore for the evening and see what we can see!

Then tomorrow we will head onwards to Culatra, just outside Faro.

Weather is still beautiful – blue skies, warm sunshine, water still swimmable (about 22 deg I believe), and usually a light sea breeze each day.

But, of course, the internet connections always suck.

Ah well.

Posted from Portimao, Portugal.

After visiting with Ceu’s family in Casegas for another month after our visit to England, we are now by ourselves on Life Part 2 down in Portimao, Algarve.

The sun is shining, the sea is (reasonably) warm, the winds variable (we often get a fresh sea breeze in the afternoon) and life is good.

We are just getting our traveler car fixed, which might take about a week to order in a new one, and then we will probably take off for theFaro area.

In the meantime I am catching up with some online stuff, and looking for a windsurfer that I can buy.

Not a lot else to report at the moment, really

Having tired of being first a doctor and then an internet entrepreneur, Dr. Noel Swanson figured he needed a new career. After briefly thinking about putting his vast experience of wind generators to good use for the benefit of the nation,

he then decided that perhaps a career in landscaping was what he really wanted to do.

And on his first day at work he successfully moved a pile of dirt from point A to point B – and then smoothed it all down nicely!

Meanwhile, Ceu decided that potato farming was more up her street.

However, it all seemed like a lot of hard work, so in the end they figured a nice swim was in order…

Thanks Carlos and Elisa for the farming and landscaping experiences!

It has been a hectic month – so apologies for lack of updates! In fact, internet access has been even harder than it normally is on the boat!

Anyway, we had a great two weeks with Ceu’s mother in the small village of Casegas. Her mom had just had leg surgery for a broken leg, so was laid up in bed with a huge leg wound. But over the two weeks it rapidly improved.

We then flew over to England (remind me never to fly again!) for Ben’s graduation.

First we had a week in the New Forest, in a static motor home, for a week with my parents. The wind was cold, but we had some lovely walks in the New Forest with all the wild ponies and cows.

We also went to the Beaulieu National Car Museum and saw some fantastic antique cars.

Then we saw Ben do his 15 second walk across the stage at Portsmouth University to collect his B.A. (Hons) – with an upper second class! Well done Ben!

Another few hectic days with sister and parents and then it was off to Portugal again.

This time we had a morning in Lisbon, and were able to take in some of the classic tourist sites, including the coach museum – full of elaborate horse drawn coaches of the 18^th century.

Last weekend we went to the medieval town of Obidos where there was a medieval market reenactment, complete with jousting, food, music, and of course costumes. I never realized how much bagpipe music there was in those days. Interestingly, the bagpipes, presumably Portuguese, all had only one or two drones, unlike the three drones on a Scottish instrument.

Allisen and Tiago arrived from Canada today, so the chaos here has increased even more. And of course there is still heaps of food each day.

Next week we will sail down to the Algarve, and probably some of the relatives will follow us down there.

Will try to keep up to date a bit more!

Posted from Sines, Portugal.

At 3:40pm today, Tuesday, we arrived at Port Sines on the west coast of
Portugal!

770 miles, for most of which, it seems, we had to motor. But, as foreacast
we finished with a blast! On the final 130 miles we had 20 kts of wind on
the beam giving us speeds of 8 and 9 knots. Plus of course dozens of ships
that we had to weave between in the middle of the night. Ceu did a great
job on that. Certainly nice having both the AIS and Radar to warn us of
them.

And then we arrived in full daylight, which is always a big bonus.

Sines marina seems a lovely little place. The town is just 6,000
population. The marina holds 230 boats, most of whom are small fishing
boats, yet the marina offers 24 hour reception and very helpful staff who
all speak English. Unfortunately there is no wifi, so we will go to the
town library to post this and check on our emails.

Today is boat clean up time – everything is out drying and airing. All the
salt has been hosed off the decks, the laundry is being done, the sun is
out, and the beer is getting drunk. Now it is time to put on the barbeque.

Next on the agenda is to work out our travel plans, book flights to
England, and a bus to Casegas to meet with Ceu’s family. We will leave the
boat here in the marina for a month, and then figure out where we are
going after that!

It is hard to imagine that we have crossed over 3,000 miles over the past
7 weeks.