Almerimar - January 2019

Almerimar - January 2019

Tuesday 8th January…

LINDA - We woke to the alarm on New Year’s Day, slightly worse for wear after only 5 hours sleep. However, the sun was shining and we had to be up and ready to meet at the beach at 10am for the New Year’s Day swim. No we weren’t brave enough to take the plunge, but we did want to be there to show our support and besides we were supplying the hot rum punch.  There were indeed 7 brave swimmers this time, even our friend Cindy decided to go for a swim. We were shocked at such a good turnout. After the swim we decided the weather was too nice to go back to the boat and so we sat drinking coffee at the nearby beach bar with Ant, Cindy, and the dogs. I could have sat there all day it was so pleasant. Later on that day we managed to Skype Alan & Yasi in Canada and had a really good chat with them……for over an hour! Well there was a lot of catching up to do.

 ...and they're off!!

The Magnificent Seven. Thanks for the entertainment guys

Post celebration cappucinos

Dean enjoying a very sunny New Year's Day

On Wednesday we had a bit of a spring clean….as you do after Christmas. We can’t take the decorations down yet though because we want to win the best fairy lights competition. The quiz was on this week but we failed to win the tiebreaker. 

Next day we took the bus into El Ejido because we wanted to get Saffy a new bed and we had a 25% discount voucher for the department store. We didn’t get a bed but we did get some new saucepans. We produced our discount voucher at the check-out but the operator looked at us rather oddly and garbled a few sentence of Spanish to us. From this we gathered that she wasn’t going to accept the voucher, so we didn’t argue. Later on we translated the voucher as we were curious to know why it had been refused. Turned out it was a voucher for a Vaccuum Cleaner!! Lol.

So we decided to go back to the local pet shop and buy the dog bed we had previously been eyeing up all last week. The shop was closed so we went back the next day. Damn, they had sold it!  We have asked them if they will order another bed the same for us. The shop is run by two ladies who are identical twins…. And I mean IDENTICAL. So you never know which lady you are talking to, and they don’t speak very much English, so let’s keep our fingers crossed. 

The weekend was coming up and it was a Spanish festival weekend called the Three Kings, and the supermarket closes for two days. We thought we should get some beer and wine in just in case we get invited out so we went to do the weekly shop. On the way back we were passing one of the boats we know and they invited us on board for coffee. They have a catamaran. We kindly accepted and ended up spending 3 hours chatting. Incredibly Saffy was still asleep when we returned to Thesee at 6pm. We had to get dinner quickly as it was Yachties Night and we were out again by 8pm. We were surprised to see our Swedish friend Ingemar was back. 

Saturday the Three Kings arrived in Almerimar by boat! Doesn’t quite have the same effect as a camel. Anyway, there was a huge crowd waiting to welcome them ashore. It’s a big tradition in Spain apparently. The Kings throw sweets to all the children and to the crowd. There was a never ending supply of sweets, they just kept coming and coming. We stayed for about an hour and then got fed up so left the crowd to enjoy their celebrations. 

The Three Kings arriving by motorboat!

...and the crowds awaiting

 Time to distribute the sweeties

Yet again the weather has been great and so we thought it was about time to take a ramble into the Nature Reserve. We had been a bit put off because a number of weeks ago it was reported that someone came across a wild boar. However, on our ramble we didn’t come across anything ‘so exciting’. We walked into the reserve for about a mile or so. It was quite open and mainly the sandy footpaths were adjacent the beach. There was a fair bit of plastic lying about and it was obvious someone had tried to tidy it up. It’s a shame that the local council haven’t organised a plastic collection being as this is a major topic in the cruising world. We must have walked about 4 miles in total, the longest walk we’ve tackled in ages. 

Here we go, into the Punta Entinas reserve

 Looking seawards

Some of the dunes

 Rambling the sandy paths

 Looking back towards Almerimar and the Sierra Nevada mountains

Weathered timber along the shore

There was a major windsurfing event on the East beach during the afternoon, and they certainly had the weather for it. It’s not really my thing and I didn’t fancy sitting about in the breezy weather so we stayed home, and I finally had chance to spend an hour or two on the latest jigsaw. 

 Attempting to sort out the skyline

We’ve been thinking about when to get the boat lifted for its usual maintenance routine. Normally we leave the sails on when this happens but here in Almerimar they are adamant about removing the sails, so we took the opportunity of a nice dry calm day to remove the staysail and the genoa. It’s quite a game dropping the sails and flaking them nicely so that they fit into the sail bags, but all went fairly well, and we didn’t lose anything over the side at least. The only annoying thing was that I forgot to take photos of the folded sails....drat. Here's a couple of after thoughts though.

Washing the dirty uphaul lines. These haven't been down for about 3 years

Dean checking the shackle with the shackle key in his pen-knife

.....and today the now completed 1000 piece jigsaw. This was another jigsaw from the charity shop that had no box and no picture. It kept me guessing but i got there in the end. Yet again, one piece missing.

DEAN – OK lets see... This week has been quite average so far. I have to get back into the jobs on board or things will get behind. We have found that the wind brings all sorts of dirt that of course lands on the boat somewhere. We have fly screens on pretty much all of the hatches which we use a lot especially as the mossies have been coming back. The fly screens of course catch all the grime.

Fly screen shown from outside, with the hatch "bars" in place

I have to unlock the security bars from the hatch to get at the screen. I polished the bars also once removed (not sure these are 316 Gavin)!

Next I decided to make a up a small bracket to guide the new spare spinnaker halyard once we have it installed. It will only be used in any emergency and as there is no real space left in the deck organiser running on the outside it should work fine.

Small stainless guide for the spare spinnaker halyard

As Linda mentioned, we took down the two foresails. This is a big job especially the genoa. It’s very large and dropping it on deck leaves very little room to work. They are now both stored safely down below. Once I had the sails down I washed the sheets through to remove any salt and grime and gave them a good soak in fabric softener. And another wash of the decks. I bought a new large bucket which makes washing a lot easier. I hope we can make some progress with the new chain now the Christmas holidays are over. I’ll keep you all informed.  

Santa has been again

Tuesday 15th January…

LINDA - Saffy went to see the local vet this week. Her annual vaccinations were overdue and we thought it best to get her booked in and keep her Pet Passport up to date etc. Dean said she was excited at first to go in the shop (obviously as she didn’t know what was coming, having never been there before). Panic didn’t set in until she got put up on the table and then realised what was going on apparently. Nevertheless, he said she was a good girl and well behaved.  Dean wasn’t so well behaved though. Reason being he went there with a dollop of chocolate down his TShirt, and didn’t notice until he got back home!

We’ve been busy defrosting the fridge and freezer. The local supermarket is closing in a few weeks for refurbishment and so we though it a good opportunity to defrost and restock before closure. All done now. Once again the weather has been marvellously sunny this week, if not rather chilly in the mornings. Blue skies all around. 

Here's the view of Darsena 3, which is right in the centre of town

On Thursday, by pure co-incidence, six of us yachties got the bus to Roquetas de Mar. They have a huge market on Thursdays, and there’s only two buses per day. So it was funny when we all turned up at the bus stop at the same time. It was fun on the bus though, having others to chit chat with. It’s about an hours journey from here and the cost is a mere 1.35 Euro each. That’s a bargain.  The buses are really good value for money. Once there, we had just two hours to get round the market and also the shopping centre before catching the bus home. The only thing we bought was pet food. Well at least we’ve been there, done that, now.

Tomatoes anyone??

and now for the spices

This week I made a poster for the ‘Ladies in Boats’. We’re trying to attract some new faces as there’s only normally about six of us at the meetings.  It’s funny how you can’t resist getting involved in stuff.  Talking about getting involved, Cindy and I decided to join the ‘Line Dancing’ club on Fridays. Tina also came along too. Tina and her husband Magnus are from Sweden and they are on one of the boats we have been following since way back in Chipiona. This week’s Line Dancing was the first session since Christmas. It’s been pretty quiet really with no quizzes on, so it was good to get out and about and join in with something. 

Yachties Night on Friday was entertaining. The numbers are gradually creeping up again, now that people are returning after Christmas. There’s not much to do at night except watch our downloaded films, so I have been busy with my puzzle books.

We spotted a stunt kite for sale in the Charity Shop and bought it for 5 Euros. Turns out it had never been opened, all the packaging was intact. So on Sunday we had great fun on the beach flying the kite. The weather was absolutely perfect. We must have been there for two hours taking it in turns. We crashed it a few times at first before we had time to get the camera out and take photos, but then soon got the hang of it. Dean has even mastered loop the loop trick. We decided to pack away when two women with a toddler decided to stupidly walk right underneath our ‘flight path’. They could have easily been knocked on the head should the kite have decided to go into crash mode!

Setting up the new kite

 

 Here we go...

....is it a bird, is it a plane??

Now it's Linda's turn

DEAN – This last week has been a little slow on the boating front, however with the impending arrival of the new anchor chain and driven by the fact that I found part of an old chip board cupboard in the big bins here I decided to make a mock up of a possible new anchor so I could make sure it fits in the bow roller assembly. The local shop here says they will lend me a Rocna anchor to see if that fits but we also have good reports and recommendations on the Spade anchor, although the local shop can get hold of one for us they are unable to lend me one to try. Hence the mock up. It also gave a me a chance to use the jigsaw that Linda brought back from the UK in her heavy suitcase last time.

My home-made 12mm chipboard Spade anchor!!

 Let's try it for size

Mmm... that fits almost perfectly

I have been trying to keep up with the monthly maintenance also. While we are sailing this seems a worthwhile job, checking for sail wear, halyard chafe, lose shackle pins etc. But once we arrived here in the marina and the weeks have been ticking by I have been less enthusiastic. Any way I spent a few hours going through everything on the maintenance list. The batteries are on charge permanently here while we are plugged in and although the battery charger only delivers the amps required and switches itself off for most of the day when the solar kicks in the voltage readings vary from about 12.8 to 14.5 volts. On closer inspection the batteries seem to use a little more water here than when we are sailing. Nothing that a little top up of de-ionised water couldn’t take care of.

I also had about 40 litres of diesel that we bought in Gibraltar that was stored in two containers in the lazarette. I lifted the containers out and using my ebay purchase of a three stage filter I bought some time ago I syphoned the fuel into the main tank. It’s best to keep the main tank as full as possible during the winter months so there is less change of condensation forming in the tank and contaminating the fuel.

 Ready to start the syphon

 There it goes, down into the fuel tank

Topped up nicely

Tuesday 22nd January…

LINDA - OK, which one of you sent us all those dark grey clouds? We’ll have less of that please. The weather took a dip this week and most days have had cloudy spells. Although the temperature has fallen to about 13 degrees during the day, it’s still beautiful and warm when the sun is out and you are sheltered from any wind direction.  Even with the cloudy spells we get some sunshine virtually every day. I guess that’s how it differs to the UK, when you don’t see sunshine for weeks. During the early hours of Monday morning we had a thunder & lightning storm which lasted for quite a while. It rained hard and it even woke me up. That’s unusual as I can sleep through anything. Dean said he found 3 inches of rain in his bucket next day.

Highlight of this week was that Saffy’s posh new bed arrived at the local pet shop. We went to collect it straight away. Also whilst we were on that outing Dean managed to buy some spare fuel pipe which he had been looking for, and I came back with a colouring book. We were really pleased with ourselves and our purchases. So we had to say goodbye to Saffy’s old bed which has served its purpose for the last four years. It was sad to have to get rid of it really but it was falling to bits.

A good day's shopping for everyone

Saffy and her super duper posh bed for lucky girls

I'm so cosy now, i think i'll have a snooze

With no specific jobs to be done at the moment we have to try and keep ourselves busy. I decided to get the Grab Bag out and check the contents. It’s necessary to keep a grab bag ready in case you have to abandon ship. Ours includes items such as Sea Survival Handbook, hard wearing gloves for holding flares, First Aid kit, Horn, Compass, VHF radio, Signalling mirror, Fishing line, Penknife, Water etc. Also we keep a list of additional items (not feasible to keep in the grab bag) to gather in an emergency e.g. Flares, EPIRB, Mobile phones, Passports. 

On Thursday our weekly bus ride took us to Carrefour where we managed to get a couple of photos printed of my completed box-less jigsaws. The photo machine didn’t have an English language option so we had to muddle through it in Spanish.  Good job Dean says he is fluent.  Friday was Line Dancing day again and this week i learned the ‘Stroller Cha Cha’ and the ‘Cowboy Charleston’.  We had another good night at Mario’s Bar for the weekly Yachties get together. The place was packed, obviously everyone returning after Christmas. 

Then unexpectedly on Saturday we found out that Leo’s quiz was back on. Dean and I went early and had dinner there beforehand. It also helps to get there early to get a table, and that was a good move because the place was heaving with teams by 9pm. We like to change our team name every week. This week we called ourselves the ‘Rusty Brains’ because it seems ages since the last quiz night.  With only four in our team we made a great effort and came 2nd equal, but lost the tie breaker. It didn’t dampen our spirits though because it was a brilliant night and as always causes great discussion over some of the answers.

DEAN – This week I have been getting ready for the lift out which should be towards the end of February. When we lift out the biggest job is always polishing the hull. The trouble is the top part can’t always be reached unless we can borrow a scaffold. So I have been trying to polish the top section by hand, reaching down from deck. It’s going OK but hard work.

Top part polished

Wow! What a difference

When we bought the boat there was a radio on board. Just a normal transistor radio, anyway it turns out that it picks up long wave and short wave as well as FM, MW etc. I stripped it down this week and managed to get it fixed I think. We hope to use it to listen to the Med Net when it restarts in April. The Med Net is similar to the Almerimar net we have been taking part in but is broadcast on the short wave, which is like radio ham. Some boats have this so they can keep in touch over hundreds of miles, maybe thousands if the conditions are right.

Re-assembled and in working order

We did a good turn during the week. We saw a message on the Almerimar Facebook page asking if anybody could charge a handheld VHF radio as they had lost their charger. Luckily it was the same as the one we have so we kept their radio on board for the day and re-charged it for them. The wind has been a little up and down this week, some days absolutely nothing and others 20 plus knots. We chose one of the still days to fly the drone and get some more practice. This time we went along the East beach promenade and to the edge of the Nature Reserve.

Lift-off

There it goes

From the drone looking down at us

Now just over the water on the shoreline. 

Linda too scared to watch.

Back over dry land. Now we can relax.

I’m still chasing the new anchor chain and other bits we will need for the next part of the adventure. Never easy as the Spanish seem to have more siesta time than working time and there is never any hurry, God only knows how they stay in business! 


Tuesday 29th January...

LINDA – Well the things you do to get free internet. The story behind this comment happened on Wednesday. Last year we bought an update card for our Raymarine Chartplotter. This allows us to update our Electronic Navionics Charts as many times as we wish for a year and it’s due to run out in February.  Well it takes a while to get the download through (what with the terrible wifi in most marinas) and being as we haven’t updated it for a few months we thought we should. A lot of the bars here offer free wifi, so off we went to the best wifi bar in town, laptop and all in hand. Trouble was we hadn’t realised it was so windy and having to sit outside (because Saffy was with us) in a half gale with your laptop open doing a download is not the perfect way to spend an hour. The sunbrellas were still up, fortunately tied to a palm tree because a couple of times the wind blew so hard we nearly got bashed on the head. Can you imagine us, holding onto the laptop and two beers trying to avoid the wayward sunbrellas. As I said…. The things you do to get free internet. We got the download so it was worth the trouble.

On one of the sunny afternoons we had, and whilst Dean was hard at work polishing, I took Saffy for a long walk around the local residential area. There are some lovely villas around with very colourful flowers along the garden walls.

Is it really January?

Found myself sitting on a bench looking up this palm tree

 Ooh...This is the life

Thursdays are turning out to be our bus ride day and we went into El Ejido on the search for multisurface furniture polish. Dean can tell the story behind that. Also I wanted to get some proper polaroid sunglasses but didn’t find anything suitable, only coming away with a fashionable pair which cost a mere 3 euro in the Bazaar. At least it was an outing and better than twiddling our thumbs on the boat. 

So onto the Line Dancing session again, second week in and seem to be getting the hang of it. Then straight to Ladies in Boats, our first meeting of the year and we were pleased to see two new faces join us. Friday’s are quite busy these days with all of that then the Yachties night too.

The weekend arrived and so did the sea mist on Saturday. That’s the first time we’ve experienced it here and visibility was down to about 100 metres in the marina. 

You can just about pick out the Capitania's Office Tower in the centre

Fortunately it didn’t dampen our spirits because we were going to the Burns Night dinner and dance. I have to say I haven’t had so much fun in ages, in fact everyone seems to have had a brilliant night. It’s the first time I have ever celebrated Burns Night, and all the decorations, bunting, and tartan were in abundance. At the start everyone has to stand whilst the Haggis is paraded  to the head table, then it’s the turn of the speaker to address the Haggis with a ceremonial reading of the famous poet’s work. The festivities went on until around 1pm with dancing and whisky drinking….over to you Dean….how many did you have?? 

 All dressed up and ready to party...i can feel a good night coming on

Sunday…..Feeling rather worse for wear we opted for an easy chill out day to recover. For the most part we sat outside in the cockpit just chatting, laughing, and recalling the events of the night before. It was a very windy day, fortunately the sprayhood was protecting us from the westerly winds so it was still pleasant with the sun out. 

Dean broadcast his usual Monday morning session on the VHF Net. He’s becoming a natural at it. His personality is starting to shine through and everyone seems to have tuned into his sense of humour. It’s a good talking point at the coffee mornings. 

DEAN – Busy week this last week. I finally managed to order the correct halyard exit for the mast. They’re made in France but I have to order from Plymouth and they deliver direct to Spain! At least it will be the correct one, we hope. Especially after I upset the Plymouth supplier during the order process. 

While we were out shopping the other day in the local supermarket I spotted some silver polish, the bottle says that it will do metal also, obviously! Anyway at under 3 euros I thought I would give it a try on the stainless steel. Wow really nice, easy to use and a fraction of the cost as it doesn’t have the word marine printed on the bottle. That got me thinking, so I found some multisurface polish that looks nice and tried it on the clear plastic windows in the spray hood. Wow again! Bonus, so far so good.

A close up of my newly polished spray hood frame

Here i am cleaning the mast steps

I do need some more hull polish though so it looks like I will have to fork out for that at the inflated marine cost! I used the other polish to clean the bikes today as they were looking a little worse for wear after they were rained on the other day, the wind also brings sand and salt moisture with it when it blows. 

The shiniest bikes in town

Sparkly clean

I made another anchor this week also, this time out of CARDBOARD. That’s still an ongoing project which will hopefully be resolved quite soon. It looks like the bow roller will have to be modified depending on which anchor we decide to go for in the end. There is quite a competent stainless steel fabricator here in the marina but of course the cost has the infamous marine price tag attached!

Cutting around the template for the Mantus anchor

I'll soon be known as the fake anchor man

It's a little on the large side... need to reconsider my options

As Linda mentioned, Saturday night was our Burns Night Dinner & Dance. After the meal there was a raffle and although we didn't win a prize, our friends won a bottle of whisky and they decided to open it there and then. Oh Dear! There wasn't much left by midnight. Seems i got roped into doing the Gay Gordon's too, and not with Linda either. Oh Dear again!

Linda... the fake whisky drinker

 Maybe it was real whisky?

Now she's larking about on the dance floor

And if you want to see the video of the Gay Gordons... copy and paste this link to your browser.

https://www.facebook.com/impavidus.ontheboat.5/videos/399112214182010/?t=0

Finally for this week's news, we arranged at the office for the boat to be hauled out. We wanted the 28th February but guess what! Another bank holiday!!!!! So March the 1st it is then. I’ve booked a week ashore so hopefully Linda will have all the dirty work done by then, if you remember she skived off the work with her sister and cousin when we lifted out in Cowes last year!


This will be the last blog post entitled 'Almerimar - January 2019'
The next post will be.... you guessed it... 'Almerimar - February 2019'