Marina Life – an everyday story of yachtie folk

Today (like a week and a half ago now) we had an email from one of our American friends from our time in Turkey, covering their Christmas newsletter (well done Carolyn for keeping it to one side of paper and nice photos!) but saying how they had noticed we hadn’t updated the blog for a couple of weeks.  What can I say?  That there hasn’t been much going on?  That, frankly, I thought you’d be bored with reading about the minutiae of marina life in winter?  That, equally, I couldn’t be bothered sitting down and writing something to keep you all amused?  I mean, what is my function in life these days?  Am I now reduced to the status of the silly old fool who’ll do anything to keep his audience happy and returning to his blog, hanging on his every word or is there more to life than that?

OK.  OK.  I get the idea, you want to be uplifted as you read the everyday stories of marina folk and catch up on the soap opera that life on board the good ship Rampage has become.  Far be it from me to deny you entry to this wonderful world, so I’d better settle down and tell you what we’ve been up to over the past couple of weeks, along with comments on events as I see fit!

The period has been spent in what the Navy would term as an ‘alongside maintenance period’.  In other words we’ve been doing all those odd jobs that accumulate on a boat as you cruise that don’t need sorting right away but can be put off until you find that you’ve got the time to do them.  Now is that time, with the weather also getting a little better to help things along.

The first job we undertook was to get the foresail down and take it off to the sail loft so that it could have a new sacrificial strip fitted.  You might have noticed that when the foresail is furled, it is nice and blue; this is because there is a thin strip of materiel along the outside edges of the sail which is designed to absorb the UV rays in sunlight; over time it decays due to the action of the UV light and it needed replacing this year.  It’s quite a big job, not for us but the sail makers.  The big job for us was getting the thing across town to the loft on the Metro; in it’s bag the sail is about twice the size of a sensible suitcase and weighs in at about 30 kg.  We strapped it to a little wheel along trolley and manhandled down into the Metro and along crowded city streets to the sail makers.  Once there, we discovered that they spoke no English and our Spanish is limited but I think we got the message across and that we’ll get the thing back next week with a nice new blue strip.  We’ll probably replace the ropes that control the sail (sheets as they’re called) when we get it back on board, as they’re getting a little frayed.

Then the strip light above the galley stopped working.  I checked the tube and that was OK, so I tested the circuit to make sure electricity was getting through and that was OK.  Diagnosis – dead light.  Cure – new light!  Simple hey?  Well, we needed to replace the light in our cabin as well, so armed with some measurements we set off to check out what was on offer at the various chandleries about the locality.  The first place we went to didn’t have any lights and the second place had a note on the door saying ‘back in 5 minutes’ so we were about to go to the Ramblas to pass the time until they reopened when we came across a neighbour who told us that the best place for boats lights was yet another chandlers, so off we set to have a look at what was available.

Brand new LED light in our cabin

We found the place easily enough (we’d seen it before but had never been inside) and found that they had a pretty good selections of 12 volt lighting.  We wound up buying a slightly more up market strip light then planned and a new LED cabin light for our cabin.  Once back on board, I began what I thought would be the simple business of taking out one strip light and replacing it with the new one.  Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that.  I couldn’t be could it?  No, light attached to the wires – no light come on.  Test the light with the supply in our cabin, brilliant light results.  So out comes the multimeter to test the supply; there was 12 volts across the wires in our cabin, about 9.5 above the galley.  Diagnosis: something wrong with the wires supplying the galley light.  The cure: remove various bits of wood and fittings to expose the wires in their journey to the junction box somewhere in the forward cabin.  Result: much cursing, skinned knuckles and bits of wood all over the place but eventually revealing a badly made connection behind one of the galley lockers, which was where the voltage drop was happening.  There then followed an entertaining 30 minutes pulling replacement wires through the hidden bits and connecting them all up, trying to remember which one was positive and which negative (strip lights need to be properly connected you see); eventually, all was finished and the light working properly.  Result!  It then took about 10 minutes to fit the new light in our cabin and a 30 minutes job was finished, having taken most of the day (if you include the time taken to buy the things in the first place).  As I write this on 25 January, J has suddenly decided that we need to replace the light in the aft head, as the old one looks grotty, so I’m now going to stop writing and toddle off into the rain and get another LED light.  I’ll be back later to tell you all about the joys of paint stripping and varnishing.

New galley strip light

The cockpit table, a folding affair which is fixed to the front of the steering column, was in need of attention.  J had put a coat of varnish on before we left UK last summer but it was looking a little tatty so a decision was reached (=J decided) that it needed doing properly.  J had taken this decision some time round about when we arrived in Barcelona, so you can tell it wasn’t near the top of the priority list.  However, about 10 days ago, I thought that I’d up the pace a little by taking the table to bits so that J could strip the old varnish off and get the wood sanded down ready for varnishing.

This led to a collection of bits of wood and a bag full of hinges and screws.  Not much action, as J felt that good weather was required before embarking upon the business of stripping the old varnish off.  Eventually we got a couple of days of good weather and the stripping began.  This was followed by a comprehensive sanding down of the wood to remove all traces of the old varnish.  Hard work and not much fun – this isn’t what I signed up for.  Eventually, the wood was ready for the first coat of varnish, after which it sanded smooth again before having further coats applied.  Sounds simple doesn’t it?  Well, in some ways it is, in other ways anything but.  You see, the varnish takes about 24 hours to dry properly before another coat can be applied and each bit of the table has a top and a bottom, so to put one coat on each bit takes 2 days, so 2 coats takes 4 days, so three coats take 6 days and we’ll probably need a 4^th coat as well, taking 8 days in total.  All this time, the various bits of the table are neatly arranged round the cockpit over newspaper raised up on bits of wood stop them sticking to the paper.  We have therefore managed to invent a new sport; dodge the wet varnish!  Only another 4 days of this performance to go……

Cockpit table in bits waiting for the next coat of varnish

Now on to more entertaining news than hearing about hard work.  Today, 27 January, we’ve moved!  All of a couple of hundred metres to a new berth on D pontoon.  We’ve been chasing a new berth ever since we arrived in October, as we were on a 15 metre berth (and paying for it) rather than a 12 metre one.  A couple of days ago Ingrid, the berthing manager, got in touch with us and offered us this place.  Once we’d had a short negotiation, she gave us a reasonable refund on our money and we started thinking about moving.

Rampage on her new berth - note step to help with boarding

Now, old naval types will tell you tales of depot ships that had been on the same mooring for some time which couldn’t move because of the rubbish that had been tipped over the side prevented them from moving.  Nothing like this in our case but we did have to do a fair bit of packing things away, refitting the steering wheel and making sure that the engine was prepared to work again after a winter skulking round doing nothing.

We moved early morning, going down first to the fuel berth where we filled up the tank with diesel – first time we’d done that since Valencia last year.  We then shoe horned ourselves into our new berth, which has finger pontoons so that it’s much easier getting on and off the boat.

Looking down the pontoon to shore

We’re now firmly established in D56, so you can amend your address books to show this change of location.  Electricity all hooked up, water topped off and the TV’s working fine.  Did I mention that we’ve got a TV?  Don’t think I did.  We’ve been lent one by a neighbour, it works off the 12v system and there’s cable TV provided at the pontoon, so we can watch BBC, ITV and Channel 4.  It’s been great to keep in touch with what’s going on at home and in the world. 

In fact, we got the thing set up just as the earthquake in Haiti was being reported, so we were able to watch things develop.  From our point of view, what was interesting for us was the fact that Shelterbox ( http://www.shelterbox.org ) was featured quite heavily in the initial stages of the reporting.  Shelterbox is a charity based in Cornwall and Tommy, Polly’s partner, is their publicity officer.  They provide boxes, packed with a tailored mix of tents and other equipment to disaster zones from pools held world wide.  Not unexpectedly, he has been working all hours since the disaster and has been providing ‘media facilities’ for all the major UK channels as well as global sets ups like CNN.  Do visit their site, using the link above so you can see what they’re up to and, perhaps, make a donation to help with their work.

The last job of the day was to go across town to the sail loft to pick up the foresail, complete with its new sacrificial strip (of band azul as the sail maker called it).  We took our old next door neighbour, Jossie, along to show her where the loft is and found that they’d done an excellent job on the sail, not only replacing the strip but reinforcing all the stitching where they had removed the old strip, making good a couple of repairs and redoing some of the work we’d had done in Barbate in the summer.  The trip back wasn’t too arduous, although we did nearly get on the wrong train at one point…..

Anyhow, we’re just off out now for a meal with some friends, so I’ll finish this off tomorrow with a couple of photos and the tale of Graham’s visit over the weekend.

Its now 2 days later, as we didn’t get much done yesterday in the writing things line.  The weather was great, sunny and warm with no wind.  J went shopping for the day with Jossie and Linda whilst I put yet another coat of varnish on the table and did some other bits around the boat.  We were going to have an early night but ‘Silent Witness’ on the telly got in the way and we had a short lie in to compensate for that!

My cousin’s husband Graham came to visit over the weekend.  His primary purpose in visiting was to see his son Dan who’s been here for just a bit longer than we have, but he and Dan came over on Saturday evening.  We fed them curry and beer and sent them on their way home sometime early on Sunday.  The plan was to watch Espanya (the other Barcelona football team) play on Sunday but the tickets were a ridiculous price so the idea was quietly dropped.  Graham came over again on Monday evening and we went out to supper at a local restaurant before he left fairly early to meet up with Dan as he finished work (he teaches English over here).

On Wednesday evening, we went out with a few friends for a meal and then came back on board to have a few drinks.  Linda, who’s over for a couple of weeks, stated that she wanted Irish coffee, so cream had been bought on the way back home and I made it to the best of my ability, given the fact that the cream was only single and therefore wouldn’t float on top of the coffee….  Linda downed hers pretty rapidly then stated she’d show me how to do it properly.  After much whisking of cream and a fair number of expletives, she admitted that she couldn’t get the cream to float either – oh and she forgot to put the whiskey in as well!  I suppose you had to be there to fully appreciate the moment but it seemed very funny at the time.

A final thing to tell you about.  J went to Ikea last week and returned with many little bits and a new mirror for the forward head.  By some fluke (‘cos she hadn’t measured it) it fitted quite nicely without any major trauma on my part.  Big improvement over the rather tatty item that was there before.

New Ikea mirror in the front heads

Right, that’s up to date and I must get this lot onto the site before it gets any later and I have to write about something else.  As we’re off out to lunch shortly, I’ll end here and get this posted.

Paradise Found

Well, the gods of the baggage handlers have finally smiled on us and have reunited us with our luggage!  After days of getting nowhere fast with the airport and Iberia and taking ourselves off to buy replacement stuff, we got a text on Monday afternoon from BA saying that the bags had finally arrived at the Barcelona!

We were pretty convinced that the bags would arrive some time the following day (ie Tuesday) but no, as we watched a film that evening we were interrupted at about 10.30 pm by a hammering on the Boris (the passerrelle).  It turned out to be the duty marinero with a courier from BA with our bags.  Having taken a week to get them to Barcelona, BA made short work of the last bit.

We’ve now had a splendid time unpacking everything and trying to stuff it away somewhere on board! 

Anyhow, now we’ve got the bags back, it means that I can get on and fit the various bits we brought back with us.  We’ll post a fuller update later this week.

Sunny Barcelona

As the days begin once again to fade into one another and one begins to loose track of what day of the week it is, perhaps it’s time once again to sit down at the computer and write an entry for the blog.  Today, just so that you know I haven’t gone completely senile, is Sunday 11 January.  It’s a lovely day here, bright sunshine and a temperature of about 10^oC.  Just a touch of breeze and it feels really quite pleasant in the sun.

J and I have just been for a long(ish) walk, along the shore and then round past the zoo, into the park and back to the marina.  We were impressed with the number of people out for a walk – quite crowded in places in a direct contrast to yesterday, when the sea front was largely empty, although the weather was pretty much the same as today.

After failing to have our bags located, we contacted the insurance company on Friday and were told we could spend some money on ‘emergency replacements’ for kit that was in the bags.  So yesterday, we bought me a new pair of deck shoes in the chandlers next to the marina.  That was the easy bit; we went into town looking for underwear, sweaters and the like only to discover that yesterday was effectively day one of the sales.  To say that the place was crowded misses the point; it was heaving.  In addition, J wasn’t feeling too bright (later identified as caffeine withdrawal) and couldn’t make up her mind up about anything, so we rapidly abandoned the plan.  Now, those of you who know J know that she likes to shop, so you can imagine just how rough she must have been feeling!

We got back to the boat and had a spot of lunch and then just settled down and watched movies and ate pizza for the rest of the day.  Actually, I think J’s much better for having done that rather than trying to fight her way through a mad crowd of bargain hunting Spaniards to buy something that she didn’t really like.  We’ve decided to go to a shopping mall on the outskirts of town tomorrow to pick up where we left off.  If nothing else, there are some nice little cafes there where I can lurk whilst J makes up her mind about things.

All of this follows on from our visit to the airport on Thursday, when we tried to quiz the Iberia staff about where our bags might be.  Some hope.  The queue for the lost baggage desk was about 60 meters long and was very slow moving, so we left them to it, had a coffee and returned to the boat.  This failure led to us talking to the insurance company and now you’re back to where we started!

We’re having our main meal just now – we’ve found some lamb that didn’t need a second mortgage to buy and we’re having it with ratatouille and spuds.  Then I think we’re going to watch a few more movies or TV shows.  We’ve borrowed a stack of them from one of our friends and we’re looking forward to watching them. (Ah, such simple pleasures!)

We had thought of going to the local museum today (the history of Catalonia) but by the time we’d got up and sorted ourselves out it was only a couple of hours before the place closed, so we went for a walk instead.  I’ll finish here with the hope that those of you reading this in the UK are not frozen solid and that the snow doesn’t last too long.  Remember, there always the option of coming for a visit – book now to avoid disappointment.  Mags has already got her towel on the sun lounger for half term but I think she’s just trying to become part of the crew – oh yes, we will be going sailing that week if the weather’s half way to reasonable.

Dress Regulations for Rampage

Well, for 34 years it was simple.  I got up in the morning and got dressed in the same clothes, according to dress regulations for the Army.  Simple.  Quick.  No choices.  I simply didn’t think about what to wear and, on those rare occasions when I wasn’t wearing uniform then there was an infallible guide to fall back on in the shape of custom and practice.  You know, lounge suit for funerals and weddings and all the easy to understand standards for just about anything else. 

When I left the army, I naively assumed that I would now no longer be subject to dress regulations.  How wrong I was to have thought that this was to be the case.  I have instead discovered a whole new world of regulation, except that instead of having it written down somewhere so that I could read and understand it, the whole thing is unwritten and, in fact, contained within Julia’s head.  I have suddenly come up against the ‘that doesn’t go with that’ rule and the ‘surely you’re not going to wear that?’ rule.  I just don’t get it.  

Why is it that I can’t wear a pair of black trousers with a dark blue rugby shirt?  I mean, looks pretty cool to me and both items were fresh out of the laundry but no, this choice was condemned out of hand and I was reduced to wearing what the boss told me was suitable.  Frankly, I thought that there wasn’t much difference between the blue rugby shirt and the stripy jersey I was told to put on as being a suitable ‘match’ whatever that means. 

I can see that the only way I’m ever going to be allowed to chose my own clothes is to apply to Julia for a chart which says what I can wear with what.  This shouldn’t be that difficult a task, as she insisted that I throw away most of my not terribly extensive wardrobe before we set off on the trip so she hasn’t got to make too complex a listing.  That said, I suspect that the easy solution is probably going to be seeking her permission before getting dressed in the morning so as to avoid any forbidden wardrobe disasters.   

I suspect that this tirade will hit a nerve with many men and their partners.  I mean, unless one is a fashion victim who spends a good deal of time and money figuring out what goes with what, lying awake in bed figuring out how to make their wardrobe work then frankly, what’s wrong with just grabbing the nearest clean clothes that suit the weather and putting them on?  How many people are going to pass out from being exposed to me wearing black trousers and a blue shirt?  In the great scheme of things, DOES IT REALLY matter? 

Apparently, it really does.  The heavens will stop in their tracks and earthquakes will occur if I don’t go ashore in ‘matching’ (whatever that is) clothes.  Can someone explain these mysterious rules to me in words that a colour blind, don’t give a damn bloke can understand?  It really is completely beyond me, perhaps on a par with the wail that used to greet me when we were invited to a wedding of ‘I haven’t got a thing to wear’ when the wardrobe rail was in danger of collapsing due to the overloading caused by multiple hangers full of clothes, all of which looked sensational when worn by my wife.  But no, a new outfit was required, usually at a price that would provide a new cruising chute for Rampage.  I mean, not just a nice dress but shoes, hat, handbag and possibly a jacket in case the weather was a little overcast.  This despite the fact that she’d been to a wedding just a couple of months ago and had a really nice outfit for that one as well (could have had a new genoa for the price of that one).  Now, if I’d raised my head above the parapet and suggested that I might need a new suit, I would have promptly been told to stop trying it on and that I had a perfectly good suit with years of wear left in it…. what price equality? 

I suppose one solution to the dilemma of what to wear in the morning without the guidance of my style consultant would be for me to overhaul my wardrobe and replace it in the manner I did with socks when I worked in London.  I simply didn’t bother with anything other than black socks; I threw away all the multicoloured ones I’d been given over the years and bought 2 weeks worth of simple black ones.  Never ran out in the whole 2 years I was in London and never had to waste any time matching pairs.  Now if only I could do the same with my clothes, it’d make life so much simpler wouldn’t it?  I can see it now; 3 pairs of jeans, 7 white tee shirts, 3 jerseys, all of an approved colour matched scheme so that I could never be caught wearing the ‘wrong’ colour combination.  Throw in some shorts for hot weather and I’m now set up for life.  I’ve floated the idea to the dress committee (Julia) and I’m awaiting their next meeting to decide if it’s feasible to proceed with the concept. 

Clearly, there’ll need to be a consultation process built into this, so if the committee does approve of the idea in principle, then I expect that I’ll throw the thing open to the readership of the blog for your thoughts on the matter.  Should, for example, the tee shirts all be plain or should they have slogans or logos on them?  Important questions, I’m sure you’ll agree.  If I get the green light, I’m looking forward to your help in compiling the shopping list for my new wardrobe.

All the best, the sartorially challenged skipper (still grizzled).

A Post Without Haste

Well, time has passed since I started to write what follows & I am only now in a position to update the blog; it’s January and we’re back on board Rampage in Barcelona…. Go figure – life was fairly busy for us whilst we were in UK over Christmas and New Year (13 different beds in a 3 week visit!). What follows is inevitably fairly long, so we have subdivided it for those of you like Pol, who prefer their blog in more manageable, bite-size pieces!

The run up to Christmas.

(written 23rd December 2009)

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Here we are in late December, just before Christmas and we’ve now had several emails asking just what we thought we were doing not posting a blog entry to let you all know what we were up to.

OK, I know that some people have been following the blog closely but I didn’t realise perhaps how closely. To be honest, we didn’t think that an entry that largely consisted of ‘got up, didn’t do a vast amount, had a nice supper and a couple of drinks and went to bed’ was the sort of thing that you’d all be interested in. Clearly, we were wrong if the complaints are to be believed. So you asked for it, so here it is!

Jonno at the ripe old age of 30 - and he still doesn't look a day over 16!

Firstly, we’re not in Barcelona at all at the moment but back in cold, snowy UK. We came back here on 12 December for a surprise birthday party for our son Jonno. He was 30 this year and his wife Lucy had organized a considerable party of friends and relations to surprise him in a bar in London. His face as he was led into the place was a picture – imagine a fish gulping for water and you’ve got it. We had a great evening and spent the following day with Jonno and Lucy in their new flat, before moving to Cheshire to spend time with Duncan’s Mum and Dad and his brother Mike and wife, Jane. We had a fair bit of business to do with banks and house letting agents and the like which kept us busy until last weekend, (19th/20th Dec.)

The scenery around Pennant farmhouse (grand-daughter Jessie in the foreground)

Since the weekend, we’ve been in a rented farmhouse high in the hills above Llanrwst in N Wales. The link below is to the Google earth map for the place so you can get an idea of how remote it is (OK, I know that our north American readers will think that it’s not that isolated but look at it from the UK perspective). <http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=53.132663,-3.756466&num=1&sll=53.141063,-3.799093&sspn=0.026777,0.06403&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=53.138842,-3.751144&spn=0.043456,0.1684&z=13&gt; I’m sitting in our bedroom to write this, looking out over a vista of snow capped mountains to Snowdon in the distance – great.

We’re here with the extended family, there were 18 of us in residence last night and the same number are due tonight, when we’re going to have a murder/mystery game, written by Julia and me. It involves murder most foul in the California Gold Rush, so it will involve much dressing up and ham acting of the worst kind! If we can remember what goes on, we’ll post an entry to tell you all about it!

The "boys" get down to some serious Lego building (left to right: Ken, Jonno & nephew Nick)

We then have another week in UK before flying back to Barcelona in the New Year. We’re very grateful to the courts for having banned the BA strike, as it means we should now be able to get back to the boat easily and on time(ish).

Making jewelry

As regards what we were up to before we left Barcelona, well most of our time was taken up writing the murder/mystery for today. This is not an easy process, especially when you’re doing it as a partnership. One person has an idea, the other thinks its rubbish and then both of you go to opposite ends of the boat to sulk. Takes forever but we did get it finished and didn’t fall out too badly in the process. We’ve also spent a certain amount of time making bits of jewelry for Christmas table gifts. The skipper seems to have a bit of a flair for this, matched only by Jonno’s skill as a nail technician!! During this week he has decorated fingernails with minute Christmas trees and snowmen, holly and Santas. An unexpected talent but it does at least mean he can earn a little extra income if pushed!

We’ve been out visiting other boats a couple of times and have hosted a few friends on Rampage, usually eating a little too much but hey, why not live dangerously! There were quite a few people in the marina who were heading back to home for Christmas but about the same number of people were staying put. The marina gave some free electricity to those who decorated their boats with lights, so the place looked quite festive as we left. I’ve no doubt that those who stayed over the holiday will have some tales to tell when we get back in the New Year.

Jessie & Charlie setting off to toboggan

This week has been pretty action-packed so far: a couple of gargantuan food shopping expeds to cope with the vast numbers we are feeding, lots of snow-related activities with the grandchildren such as tobogganing and building an igloo plus a trip on the Ffestiniog Railway. The latter is a narrow gauge railway which originally took slate from the N Wales hill quarries down, through some beautiful scenery, to the coast at Portmadog. It has been a tourist attraction for many years now and our grandchildren, Charlie & Jess, were the third generation in the family to ride on it. None of us before, however, were privileged to ride the “Santa Special” through the snowy hills, opening early Christmas presents whilst their adult relatives enjoyed mince pies and sherry and endured Santa’s excruciatingly bad jokes!

Charlie, Grandpa & Jonno inspecting the engine at Tan y Bwlch station

The Santa Special

Charlie, delighted with his gift, aboard the Ffestiniog, with Lucy looking on!

Jess and daddy, Ken, admire her new "Princess" storybook

Christmas and New Year.

(written 5th January 2010. Photos for the following sections will be added when our luggage – including camera – has been restored to us!)

Well, that’s the end of the bit we wrote in December. The murder/mystery was a great success with most people eventually guessing that Lucy did the foul deed using Tommy’s pistol. We all ate far too much through the week and drank a fair bit too. There had to be several replenishments of the beer stocks (and I thought I’d over-catered in that department). One Christmas Eve, Jonno & I constructed a hot air balloon out of multi-coloured tissue paper which we launched after dark from the back garden and watched sail away into the night sky over the hills. We then retreated indoors to the warm, and after supper sang carols, accompanied by Great Grandpa on his clarinet and fortified by some wonderful mulled wine, courtesy of Tommy.

The church service on Christmas morning in Betws y Coed was excellent and the children were delighted to be greeted by a vicar liberally covered in spray glitter and later to be presented with a Christingle orange each and have its meaning explained to them. Later, after presents and lunch, Mike & Jane produced a family tree they have been working on over the past few months and we were invited to update it where possible, (a golden opportunity when we were all gathered together.) This was followed by a general knowledge quiz put together by Jonno and Lucy and to round the day off, we were treated to an archive Byrne family photo show! Over the past few weeks Mike has been painstakingly scanning old slides and photos onto the computer and compiled a wonderful selection of amusing and embarrassing pictures of the family over the past half century. On Boxing Day we went to the pantomime of Dick Whittington. It followed tradition with lots of audience participation, singing, booing and shouts of “It’s behind you!!” Almost inevitably, because we were sitting on the front row, the Dame took a fancy to Grandpa and decided I was undressing her with my eyes – hmmm – unlikely!

After we left the farm, we spent one night at my parents in Waverton before I put J on the train down to visit the Cardiff part of the family whilst I did some scouting round for various bits for Rampage (including a new immersion heater element for the hot water system). I then spent the next couple of nights with my brother Mike & his wife Jane in Wrexham, before taking Dad up to visit sister, Susie and partner Ian at Carnforth. J got back from Cardiff the same evening and we stayed with Mike & Jane another night.

The following day was New Years Eve and we went down to Y Felinheli, (aka Port Dinorwic) where we kept Rampage before we set out, to spend the day with friends from Malpas (Jean and Al from next door and John and Sally from No Mans Heath). We stayed in a rather run-down hotel called the Pink Palace and alternately froze and boiled as an erratic heating system struggled with the weather. There is, however, a great little pub in the village where we had lunch and then returned later to see in the New Year. A grand, if relatively quiet time was had by all.

New Years Day was spent with Richard and Julie Horovitz in Deganwy, just over the river from Conway. They have just moved into a new house there – spectacular views over the river to the castle and the hills beyond. After a quiet night with them we retreated to Mike and Jane’s before staying our last night in UK with my parents.

Return to Barcelona

(written 5th January 2010)

The trip back out here was long, frustrating and an example of why I loathe Heathrow Airport! The flight from Manchester was late leaving (because of delays for de-icing), so we arrived late in London. We then had to transfer to Terminal 3 (had thought the idea of Terminal 5 was that all BA flights went from there?), taking an age to get through the security checks (6 lanes of equipment with only 2 actually in use, queue of 30 minutes) then rushed through to the gate with minutes to spare. Then we spent another hour and half on the plane waiting for – you guessed it – a de-icing truck to turn up and deal with a bit of hoar frost on the wing.

This wouldn’t have been too bad but we got to Barcelona only to find that our baggage had not turned up. All the pilot books, bits of cooking stuff, charts, spares (not to mention our clothes, Julia) all gone walkabout in the black hole that is Terminal 5. Ah well. Took another hour waiting to report the bags had gone missing before we caught the train back to the marina.

Well, I hope that’s brought you up to date with what’s been going on over the past few weeks. We’ll be a little more diligent in keeping the blog updated – indeed the Skipper has written an opinion piece which will be posted after this entry for your amusement.

Do come and visit us, either here in Barcelona or on our travels this year. Our outline plan is pretty simple. We leave Barcelona on 27 April and will be sailing to the Balearic Islands. We aim to explore the islands for a few weeks, although we have to be clear of Spanish waters by the end of June if we are to avoid being clobbered for a Spanish tax on the boat. We then intend to move to Corsica and Sardinia before visiting Rome and Naples; we aim to finish up in the Ionian Sea for the winter but dates are more than a little flexible. The only truly fixed date is 7 August when Polly and Tommy get married in Cornwall; we’re looking now for a place to leave the boat for a few days whilst we fly home to join in the celebrations (we’re promised Grandma’s Weapons-Grade Ginger Beer amongst other Cornish delights). You can see from this that things are fairly fluid and will remain so. If you’re planning a visit, then the best thing to do is to keep an eye on the blog, email us to see what our cruising area will be for the dates you’re thinking about and then book you travel fairly last minute. We’ll then either be able to meet you at the airport if you happen to be able to come to one near us or we’ll get you local travel advice on how to get from the airport to where we happen to be. Best visit location (from the point of view of ease of pick up) will be the Balearics (they’re small enough that we can come to the island you fly into to pick you up) or Corfu in September/October time. Best time from the point of view of getting some sailing in will be Corsica and Sardinia (nice open sea positioning trips to be had with really good coastlines to explore). Hey, it’s up to you. Please do come and visit.

We’d like close by wishing everyone a happy and prosperous 2010.