A new take on waiting for the wind!

The time has finally come, the Walrus said, to think of many things, including, I suppose sitting down and writing a new blog entry.  Whilst I do not have an excuse for not having put anything up on the site for some weeks, I do have an explanation, as you will see if you read this entry.

Charlie, Jess & Lily Byrne

My last post welcomed little Lily Alison into the world and saw Julia in Dublin and I was in Wrexham.  We’re now back in Barcelona; I visited Dublin and then came back with Julia via Manchester and Liverpool.  

Lily aged two days!

The day following our return (7 April), Julia’s brother Ian and his wife Barbara arrived from Andalucía to stay with us for a few days.  We took Rampage to sea for the first time this year whilst they were here and had a really good day sailing; force 3 – 4 winds, giving us 7 knots at times.  We had a really good day out and demonstrated to ourselves that we haven’t forgotten everything about sailing.

Ian, Meg, Barbara, Bron, and Julia

 Before Ian and Barbara left on 13 April, their daughter Bron and her daughter Meg (oh, do keep up) arrived on 11 April to stay for just over a week.  For the mathematically inclined, you will spot that this gave us 6 people on board – a fairly crowded boat.  We all survived without falling out too much and saw Ian and Barbara off for their flight back to Bristol on Tuesday.

 Since they (Ian and Barbara) left, Julia has been doing tour guide duties for Bron and Meg, whilst I’ve been catching up with various jobs on the boat, including servicing the engine.  Spanish prices for just about anything to do with yachting are much higher then UK prices (which are high enough in all conscience); having bought filters before we set out, I thought I’d managed to avoid paying them this year.  No such luck!  The oil filter turned out to be the wrong size, so I had to buy one from the local agency.  I almost had to take out a bank loan for it; it was almost 3 times the price of the same thing in the UK – in fact it’s cheaper to buy one on line and pay postage than to buy locally.

 The engine on the boat has to have the waste oil pumped out rather than a simple drain tap.  This led to a minor disaster in that the top of the pump came off during the operation and dumped a fair bit of waste oil all over the cabin and saloon.  I’d just about finished cleaning up when Julia returned to the boat to be greeted by and oil smeared husband and spots of sump oil on the bedding…….  The subsequent trip through a boil wash succeeded in dying the sheets and my BlueO2 tee shirt a gentle shade of light blue.  Ah well, at least that’s one job out of the way until this time next year.

 We’ve also taken delivery of a new sail.  It’s a cruising chute; a large, lightweight sail for use when there isn’t much wind.  We ordered it from Jeckells, who made it for us to our design (red, white and blue) and Steve brought it back from UK for us, as he is a Jeckell and his brother runs the company.  We tried the sail out yesterday when we took Bron and Meg out for the day.  The wind was very light and it was a great day for learning how to use it.  We didn’t think to take any pictures so that’ll have to wait until we go out and put the chute up again.

Able Seaman Meggie gets to grips with the chart plotter

Since I  started writing this last Thursday and since then, of course, the ASH CLOUD has arrived and caused chaos for many.  Typically, we didn’t actually notice anything amiss until about 48 hours after everyone else: comes of not watching TV because of visitors and being too tight to buy a newspaper.  To start with, we thought that it wouldn’t affect us as everything was bound to be back to normal this Monday when Bron and Meg were due to depart.  Not true!  In addition, Sue Macnab (an old friend – well, long-standing anyway!) is out here for what was meant to be an extended weekend with her daughter’s hen party (8 women it total) – they’re not satying on board but are in a flat near the Ramblas.  They were all due to fly back on Sunday but that didn’t happen either.

 Rampage has now become a travel agency as increasingly frantic efforts are being made to find a way home for the various waifs and strays.  J has just set of to Sants station with Sue and Helen Mee (another friend) to beard the car hire companies in their dens, whilst Bron is off doing laundry and I’m about to pop out to the chandlers for more rope and some engine bits that I’ve got on order.

I’ve no pictures to post at the moment but will have some later but I thought that I’d get this up on the site so that you got some idea of the fun that we’re having at the moment.  Once things have resolved themselves a little (ie a cunning plan emerges) I’ll put some pictures up on the site along with an update on what’s happening.  As they say, watch this site.

Then there were 3 (grandchildren that is)

First, a short apology for no posts over the past couple of weeks.  No excuse except for this omission other than sheer idleness.

Now for the news.  As you may know, we’re not in Barcelona at the moment but I’m in UK whilst J is in Dublin with Naomi.  We’ve been back since last Saturday when we managed to work round the edges of the BA cabin crew strike to get back to Manchester.  J went to Dublin the following day whilst I’ve stayed with my brother Mike just outside Wrexham.  The reason we came home was for the arrival of Naomi’s baby, which was due on 19 March.

The baby was due to be born on 19 March but had clearly decided not to bother joining us just yet as there was no sign of anything happening until today.  Naomi was taken to the hospital just before midday nad by 1320 Lily had been born.  She weighed in at 10 lbs and both mother and daughter are doing well.  Ken was there for the birth whilst Granny looked after Charlie and Jessica.

At the moment, we don’t have any pictures but I’ll post something as soon as I can – J may just get something up on the site after she’s been to visit this evening.

An update, here’s a picture!

Lily Alison Byrne

Where did the weekend go?

I left you last time with the excitement of moving Rampage to a new berth and the amazing Joan Baez concert that we went to last week.  To be honest, not a vast amount has happened since then but given the comments that we get if we don’t publish, I thought that I’d better get on and write about the intervening period for your delight and elucidation.

The weather seems to have settled into a bit of a pattern:  one day pleasantly sunny and warm, the following day overcast and cool, the next day wet and horrid and so back to the beginning….  Today is the wet and horrid day of the cycle but the forecast promises 3 days of nice weather from tomorrow.  We shall see how it actually shapes up.  As it is, today is a good day for staying inside and catching up on inside jobs, like writing blogs.  So now you know.

Last week, after the concert, we mainly did little jobs around the boat.  Cleaning the decks down kept us occupied for a couple of hours, as they hadn’t really been done for some time.  When we were berthed stern to, we didn’t really go forward on the decks very much and hadn’t realised just how grotty they’d got, so our new berth, where we have to walk along the deck every time we get on and off, brought their state to our attention.  More importantly, the dirt was only too visible to anyone walking down the pontoon.  A happy time was had by J and me, scrubbing away and getting distinctly damp round the edges!  Now all we have to do is keep it reasonably clean rather than having to excavate through a deep layer of stuff to the deck.

The more observant of you will have noted that the title of the piece is ‘Where did the weekend go?’  There is, as you might expect, a reason for this.  In many ways, the fact that it is the weekend is an irrelevance to us, as being aged pensioners we don’t need to wait until the weekend for free time and having fun.  However, some of our friends here do still work for their living and therefore look forward to the weekend as a time of leisure.

One such friend is Steve.  He is the captain of one of the super yachts currently being refitted in the yard between the marina and the harbor entrance and lives on board his motor boat in the marina when he’s not on board the yacht.  His wife Linda is often out here from the UK but is back home just now, so it was no surprise to get a call from Steve on Friday evening seeing if we’d like to go for a drink or two.  Now, normally, we’d have been there like a shot for as long as we felt like staying.  However, we’ve been watching the serial ‘5 Days’ on BBC1 and didn’t want to miss the last episode, so we went over to the Fastnet Bar until just before it started.  This represented something of an early finish for both us and Steve, so we invited him round for a few drinks on Saturday evening, which is where it all started to go downhill.

We had a great time on Saturday, putting the world to rights and generally deciding we could do a much better job of most things than the idiots who are currently doing it, if only we were given the chance.  We were in bed quite early – somewhere round about 1.30 – 2 o’clock.

Sunday, we had Paul and Nicky round for lunch.  Poor Paul was not feeling too good and was all dosed up on cold remedy so didn’t eat too much but seemed happy to help in reducing the Spanish red wine lake, as were the rest of us.  Again, I’m not too sure of times but the resulting array of dead men by the sink was quite impressive (J says that she was quite glad that it was raining hard this morning, so that there was no one around to see the size of the bag, when she snuck out to the recycling bin with all the empties).  We had a great time and I’m sure that the world would be a much better place if someone had made a note of all our ideas and implemented them; however, I can’t remember a single one of them.  Can’t think why.

The deadmen from Sunday lined up before J took them to the bottle bank...

So you can see that the weekend has passed us by in a blur that reminds me greatly of the way it used to do when I was a junior officer and stuck in the mess over a weekend.  Nothing to do but eat, drink and have a good time with a bunch of like minded folks. 

Today has started very, very slowly.  It’s not been helped by the weather which is now trying to snow for crying out loud.  This is Spain, not England.  It’s not meant to do this over here.  Once I’ve figured out who to complain to, I’ll be getting in touch with them under the Trade Description Act – what’s happened to ‘sunny Spain’?

Yes it really does snow in Spain......

Right, that’s out of the way now.  I’ll have to see if I can get a couple of pictures to accompany this blog, as Julia says that it always look better for a picture or two.  How do I find something that helps describe our lost weekend?  All the best until next time.

Third Time Lucky

The reason for the title for this piece will emerge as you read it………

Seeing as J wrote the last blog, she has, in her imperious way, detailed me to write this entry.  Our last update was made just before we returned to UK for a few days, so I’ll tell the tale of our visit to the frozen north and subsequent goings on.

Well, firstly, just why did we have to go back to the UK for a few days just before we’re going to be going back for the arrival of Naomi and Ken’s latest addition (or should that be edition?).  It’s pretty simple really.  Our travel insurance has a limit of 62 days out of UK before it becomes invalid.  Normally, we wouldn’t bother too much about insurance, as we tend to be away too long at a time anyway.  Then we were parted from our bags by the evil forces which inhabit Terminal 5 at Heathrow and became convinced that we’d never see them again.  We therefore went on line and found the cheapest flights back to UK that we could and booked them, so as to remain within the limits imposed by the insurers.

All well and good and we felt quite happy with the idea.  Then BA actually found our bags and returned them to us, so we didn’t need to replace all the contents of the cases (with all the yachtie stuff we’d picked up over Christmas, this represented a small fortune).  The next amazing thing was that when we sent BA our claim for emergency replacement kit, they meekly paid up without any argument!  Result – we had a trip to make back to UK with no real reason to do so anymore.

Never mind; we decided to stick with the plan, as you can’t get a refund out of Easyjet.  The flight home was OK, slightly delayed by our Gallic friends having an Air Traffic Control strike. (What is it with the French these days?  They seem to have taken over as the European champions of pointless strikes, especially ones intended to make life miserable for the maximum number of people.  Ah well, perhaps that’s why we haven’t built in any visits to the French mainland for this summer – can’t stand the thought of getting caught up in some fisherman’s blockade.)

My sister-in-law, Jane, met us at Liverpool and took us back to their place where we stayed for most of the time we were back in UK.  J had arranged to spend Thursday in a series of pubs meeting all her mates from M&S Money, a truly excellent plan of action and one that I shall try to replicate next time I’m allowed off the leash in UK.  I went into Chester to try and pick up her engagement ring but failed, as the jewellers were in chaos as the shop next door had started to collapse and they’d had to evacuate at short notice.  Perhaps it’ll be ready when we go back at the end of this month.

Friday was spent in Shrewsbury, visiting the storage unit where we moved from a 75 sq ft unit to a 50 sq ft unit because Jonno and Lucy have taken a lot of stuff away for their new house.  This entailed removing everything from the store, filling the corridors of the place with stuff (just why did we keep some of it?) and then restacking it all in the new room.  By dint of a degree of hard work and very high stacks of things, we fitted all our remaining stuff into the smaller unit, apart from one easy chair which has gone to Mike and Jane.  In fact the stacking went better this time, as all of the stuff was there to start with rather than arriving in a random order in a series of van loads; this meant that we could put all the similar sized boxes into stacks taking up the smallest amount of room.  Just don’t ask for anything that went in to the place, as getting anything out represents a significant challenge.

Saturday and Sunday were fairly relaxed, doing a bit of shopping in Chester and walking the dog.  J and I then went to my parents for Sunday night.  The four of us went out for a meal to celebrate (slightly belatedly) my birthday and Dad’s, both of which occur in February.    We’d been intending to catch the train and bus to the airport for the flight back to Barcelona on Monday but my sister Jinny turned up at Mum & Dad’s halfway through the morning and decided she would take us to the airport by car – magic! 

J doing the painful stuff - working out where all the money's gone!

The flight back was totally uneventful and on time.  The temperature in UK had been 3 or 4^oC, so we were delighted to find that it was about 16^oC when we arrived back here.

On Tuesday, we had intended not to do too much, as we had Spanish lessons to go to and then a Joan Baez concert.  Things, however, did not work out quite like that.  Firstly, we’d had a very noisy night on Monday, with much fender squeaking and rope creaking.  This was because the berth we were on was very tight, with only just enough room to fit into next to a catamaran, so any movement of the boat resulted in movement against the fenders, hence the noise.  If the ropes were tight enough to prevent movement, then the fenders didn’t make too much noise but the ropes creaked instead – can’t win.

Rampage on berth number 3 (Third time lucky?) Room to breathe at last

So, on Tuesday, J stumped off to the marina office to ask if we could move to one of the vacant berths on D Dock and was gob-smacked to be given the OK, move to D43!  This was on the other side of the pontoon a few down from the old berth. 

We decided to move once we’d put done the washing and shopping, so off we set to Barceloneta looking a little bit like extras looking for a part in a Chinese laundry.  That took until middle day, so we set about moving the boat to her new berth without further delay, as we couldn’t hang out the washing until we’d moved (can’t see to drive if the washing’s out!)

This is not a simple performance, as it was when we were cruising.  ‘Rampage’ is very definitely in marina mode at the moment: water, electricity and TV hook ups; anchor chain sitting in the water to give access to a leaking chain locker; no steering wheel and a splendid selection of ropes to keep her moored.  It took about an hour to get everything ready to move and another 40 minutes to get everything hooked up again once we’d moved (that only took about 10 minutes!). 

A wet day in Barcelona - stuff drip drying in the cockpit

Then we hung out the washing and tramped up to the Palau de Musica to pick up the tickets for the concert, only to be told that they were only available one hour before the concert begins!  Ah well, the walk did us good.  Once we got back to the boat, we thought we could relax and get ready for Spanish. 

View from the stern at the new berth

Ah no!  J suddenly remembered that her passport needs renewing and that we should take it up to the consulate for processing.  The FCO website was down but we knew where the place was so off we set.  A short metro ride and a longish walk later we found the place, only to discover that it was shut.  By now it was too late to go to Spanish so we made and ate supper and took a deep breath before setting off to walk back to the Palau de Musica.  J has raved on about this place before, so I won’t bore you with it other than to say that it is completely over the top.

We last saw Joan Baez in concert in Dusseldorf in about 1991 in the Tonhalle, a similar sized venue to the Palau de Musica.  She doesn’t seem have changed a bit since then; she still has the ability to hold an audience in the palm of her hand.  Terrific concert and the walk back to the marina passed very quickly.

View down the pontoon - note taken today, which is sunny not yesterday when the blog was written!

Today is, not to put too fine a point on it, horrible.  Whilst the temperature is not too bad, there’s a brisk wind blowing and it’s persisting down, so we’ve been doing inside jobs today.  Writing the blog, doing the accounts, changing over toilet pumps.  What we’ve not been doing is wandering round this lovely city ‘cos it’s too wet and horrid.  Can’t always have it our own way I suppose.  Right, that’s enough for the time being.  I’ll take a couple of photos to show you all the new berth and then get on and post this for you all to enjoy.

Skiing in the Pyrenees

All dressed up and somewhere to go....

Yeah, OK, I know, J and I don’t ski and probably don’t want to either.  But we had to give this posting a title and this seemed reasonable at the time I wrote it.

So, what have we been up to since our last post a few days ago?  Well the social whirl has slowed down to manageable proportions and we’ve been doing some more work on the boat.  Those of you who’ve stayed in the aft cabins of Rampage will appreciate all the effort that has gone into fitting a reading light which doesn’t require getting out of bed to switch off.  I’ve only done one light so far, as we only have small numbers of guests coming over the next few weeks.  Perhaps I’ll get round to fitting the other side before we leave in April.

The final act of our mad social whirl was to go out to lunch on Friday last week with Nicky and Paul.  We went to a little local place and had the menu del dia – soup, fish and pud – including ½ a bottle of local wine each for the princely sum of €11 each.  Bargain!  We’d already had a bottle of cava before leaving the boats so the rest of the day passed in a pleasant haze.

Saturday was a lazy day.  I enjoyed it immensely but Julia got a most unusual attack of conscience half way through the day because she ‘wasn’t doing anything’.  I couldn’t think of anything useful to do and didn’t mind not doing it but J clearly felt that she should have been doing something: not that she knew what she wanted to do anyway.  I give in.  Anyhow, sometime early evening, Steve gave us a call and asked if we’d like to go skiing (now you understand the title) with them the following day.  One of Steve’s crew had been going to go with them but had changed his mind so there was now space in the car.  We jumped at the chance; not to go skiing but for a day trip to the mountains and the snow.

At 0745 we met Steve and Linda at the car and then had an entertaining start to the trip whilst we tried to make sure that the Tomtom was set up with the right Las Molinas.  There seemed to be about 8 of them in Spain but we finally got the right one selected and followed the instructions to our destination.  It wasn’t a long drive – about an hour and 45 minutes but the snow didn’t appear until the last 15 minutes or so.

Ah, these are skis then! First time on skis for some years for Steve and Linda

Steve and Linda hired their skis and got lift passes whilst J and I wandered around and watched loads of small children being taught to ski.  We then watched as Steve and Linda managed to get on to the ski lift without too much trouble before walking up the edge of the piste.  We then found a route back through the woods to the bottom of the ski lifts where we met up for a spot of lunch before wandering around looking at the more difficult slopes.  As it was the first time that Linda had skied for some years, she was feeling the effects of skiing and decided to stop round about 2.30, so we all headed back to town along a different route, which was meant to be quicker but wasn’t.

I really haven't put on that much weight, just warmly dressed...

Monday was spent in biking out to a shopping mall called Diagonal Mar, where there is a large Alcampo supermarket (actually, it’s a French chain called Auchain retitled for Spanish sensibilities).  The reason for going there is simple.  Porridge.  It’s about the only place we’ve found in Barcelona that sells the stuff at a reasonable price.  You can get it at a ‘Taste of Home’ (a shop selling UK food) but everything there is very expensive.  We had a nice ride up there but had to battle into the wind on the return leg and were quite tired by the time we got back to the boat.

The high Pyrenees in all their snow covered glory

J went to gossip central (AKA Ladies Coffee Morning) on Tuesday, leaving me to go and load money on to the broadband dongle.  No problem there but she was gone for ages so I tried calling her on the mobile, only to discover she’d not bothered to take it with her.  Ah well, I relaxed in the sunny cockpit with a cold drink and a good book to await her return; she duly appeared after an exciting visit to the Born(a nearby district of Barcelona) and its market and wanted to know why I hadn’t bought bread for lunch.  I mean, this was gone 2 pm.  Once lunch was out of the way, we got down to our Spanish homework, writing a recipe.  Much cursing and consulting of dictionaries resulted but we did manage to complete the task before class started at 5.30.

Today has been a ‘busy day’.  We’ve bought new, flat fenders, as they’re somewhat thinner then the round ones and better suited to the lack of space between us and next door.  Now we’ve put them in place, they also turn out to be quieter as well – ish!  We then inflated the dinghy and cleaned it inside and out; it’s drying now prior to be repacked.  We should really have done this before we put it away last year but the weather got in the way.

Well, you’re now bang up to date with the goings on of the crew of Rampage.  We’ll update the blog again in the next few days, provided that we done enough to make it worth reading.

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.

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.

A Winter Home

Great jubilation! We’ve finally managed to pursuade the rather severe Ingrid at the Marina Office to let us have a berth here at Port Vell for the next six months. The prospect of having to travel 160 miles back to Valencia as winter progresses was unsettling though perfectly do-able. However we have both fallen in love with Barcelona and really wanted to stay so we’re very relieved. We now have a postal address too though we would hasten to say that we do not plan to send any Christmas cards & likewise, do not expect to receive any. However, for future reference our address until the end of April is as follows:

Julia & Duncan Byrne

Yacht “Rampage”, Berth E5

Marina Port Vell S. A.

C/. Escar, 26 (Moll del Rellotge)

08039 Barcelona

Spain

Breakfast in the cockpit, Maggie's last morning

Artists in Las Ramblas (note the Skipper wandering off without me!)

After bidding Maggie, the last of the Stunning Ruins, a fond farewell on Saturday we did a brief shop & then set off on bikes for the Ramblas. When we got there, there were so many people about that we decided to chain our bikes up and wander round on foot – to be honest, the only thing to do in the Ramblas. It is great fun just pottering round the little craft stalls selling hand-made leather goods, jewellery and ceramics, carved wood and hippie clothes. There are artists selling every style of painting, some persuading passers-by to sit for an impromptu portrait, plus lots of flower stalls & “souvenir stalls“ selling postcards & all the usual tat. There are also lots of bars and restaurants all the way up the street which must be ½ a mile from near the waterfront right up to Placa Catalunya – Barcelona’s equivelent of Trafalgar Square. We’ve been warned however, not to eat on the Ramblas because you apparently pay a premium for the location.

A charcuterie stall in the market

Duncan pointed out the main covered market here in Barcelona, which we Ruins managed to totally miss last week. It seems every bit as good as the grand market in Valencia if not as ornate. On the way back to our bikes we were attracted by the sound of drumming in a street off to the right.

A fruit & veg stall at the main Barcelona market

We went to investigate & discovered 50 or 60 people with every shape & size of drum making the most tremendous din, encouraged and led by their enthusiastic conductor/musical director. We stayed to listen for quite a while – it was such fun. It was getting dark by then and there was such a brilliant atmosphere – everyone relaxed & happy & enjoying themselves. I was however, quite relieved to find the bikes still chained up where we’d left them as Barcelona has a bad reputation for pickpockets etc & I was quietly worried that they might have disappeared.

There are often musicians playing in the wide paved area between the marina and the street and people wander along or sit and listen to the music. As well as pedestrians there are lots of cyclists and people on roller blades; it is all very chilled. Just as we were going to bed that night, there was a firework display down on the beach at the far end of the marina which we sat & enjoyed with our neighbour, Josie.

Revellry at the pontoon party

On Sunday we had a quiet day doing some domestic admin and girding our loins for the pontoon party which began at 4pm. We’d seen a notice in the loos, inviting all comers and later Josie mentioned it to us; she seemed to be one of the instigators. Everyone brought drinks & munchies. Our Doritos and dips were very modest compared to some of the kebabs and sate etc other people had brought along. As well as Brits, there were Americans, Canadians, Swedes and Josie who is Dutch. Everyone was very friendly, (especially after a few drinks !) and we were given lots of useful local information including the best places to eat, concerts in the Madrid Bank on a Friday night for €2.50 ahead and an enormous DIY emporium which we tracked down this afternoon. We were also invited along to a Cava Bar at midday today – see below. Duncan was also delighted to be offered some electronic charts which cover italy, the Adriatic and Aegean in exchange for a bottle of rum.

Yesterday Duncan & I went off to hunt for a chandlers’ shop he’d seen an advert for in the marina. When we tracked it down it proved to be a great find – much bigger and better stocked than either of the other chandlers’ we’ve found. We bought some potion recommended by our friends Brian & Rose for dealing with rust marks on the gel coat. Later we set to with brushes and buckets and the hose to scrub the decks. Rampage looks a lot smarter for the attention. We then went on a recce to find the bus station in anticipation of Polly & Tommy’s arrival this evening. I managed to fall off my bike for the second time since getting them – no damage this time but humiliating nonetheless. Luckily it was in the park & not in the street. No I hadn’t been drinking (on that occasion,) but swerved following a last minute change of mind about which way to go and skidded on loose gravel.

Talking of drinking, the Cava Bar today was brilliant – a bottle of fizz plus a delicious filled roll each for €7! Can’t be bad. Needless to say the rest of the afternoon was pretty well a wash-out. D went for snooze (no surprise there I hear all those who know him cry,) and I sat & read my book (Road to McCarthy by Pete McCarty which I highly recommend.)

Having recovered somewhat we went to inspect a paserelle (gankplank) which one of the Cava party is thinking of selling. We are managing without one just now but inevitably will need one at some stage & have been on the lookout for a likely plank of wood for a while. There is a system of swapping goods that takes place in the loos here. We’ve come across book swaps before but here anything goes. D has returned from his morning shower armed with a bicycle basket, a battery operated fan and several thimbles (eye shaped devises which you splice into the end of a piece of rope to make a neat loop.) Tonight there was lots of clothing hanging up in the ladies but I haven’t got quite that desperate yet & besides it was men’s clothing!

This evening we are walking up to the Arc de Triomf to meet Tommy & Polly who will be arriving on the airport bus from Girona. They are staying til Saturday & we are really looking forward to showing them some of the sights. We’ve signed up for Spanish lessons which start next week & are invited to a Chestnut Party on board one of the boats in the marina next Wednesday. Watch this space for more exciting updates…