Hanging around the Costa Blanca

Monday 15th April 2019

We here we are all alone again, just me and the Saffy dog to guard the ship. The day started well with a 5am rise. Linda had a flight booked from Alicante at 8.30 so book in time was 6.30. Anyway all went well and using aunty Vons car we managed to navigate ourselves (eventually) to the departures. It was still dark when I got back to the boat. Alicante is about 15/20 mins from us here in Santa Pola.

I had a few jobs planned for today, while it was still quite cool I emptied out the starboard lazerette locker and fitted the galvanic isolater I bought back in Almerimar.
While we are in a marina and plugged in to the mains this device stops any stray current from other boats damaging underwater items on Thésée. Hopefully. 

It was simple enough to fit but as always just a bit awkward to get to.

 Galvanic isolator in the lazerette

I did a few other small jobs before lunch and then decided to have a look at the loo! 

We have two toilets, they are electric, there is a macerator  pump which smashes the poo up and pumps it into a tank which can then be emptied when you get to a marina with the pump out facilities. These toilets work fine but before we left I changed one of the pumps and brought the other along as a spare. The only thing you have to remember is not to put anything down the loo that you've not eaten first.

This is what I found!

I've interrogated Saffy and she denies all knowledge, and anyway we all know she never goes on the boat. That leaves only one other!

That's why I used Linda's tooth brush to clean the pump!

It should look like this new one

It fits in here

Here we are job done

I managed to clear the baby wipe from the old pump eventually and we can now keep that as a spare. Surprisingly the toilet still worked reasonably well! Any way Saffy and me are going to see Auntie Von and Uncle Jim tomorrow so Thésée will be left all alone for a couple of days, the first time for nearly a year. Whoops that's not right!

Tuesday 16th April 2019

Just having a go at remote blogging so you will have to forgive the text mistakes. So we set off in the car today towards Torrevieja, Saffy is navigating and I’m driving, possibly should have swapped places! Anyway we had a few photos on the way. 

Those are flamingos in the distance! Told you Saffy should have driven

Nice photo of the road with the Med in the far distance

We arrived safely in the end and I started the hard job of washing 12 months worth

of clothes!

Thank you Von

After a spot of lunch we ventured out to Leroy Merlin that’s B&Q Spanish style.

The underground car park is huge, even the parking spaces had green of red lights to show if they are empty or full.

Big underground car park. You had to be there!

I spent more money, I’ll write about that later. We then took Saffy for a walk by the beach, took a couple of photos of that also.

Beach board walk

Flowers by the beach walk

We went out for a meal to a local restaurant San Marino. I had far too much to eat it was fantastic, What’s even better is that I forgot my wallet so Jim had to pay. 

Jim putting on a brave face ready for the bill

Wednesday 17th April 2019

We had quite a late night catching up with news and gossip, as you do. I started the day with a swim in the pool which was nice, but the wind is a little chilly today.

Early(ish) morning dip

And another!

After breakfast and a little computer cussing...as you do. We went down by the beach to a chiringuito for Von's Spanish conversation morning. Some wanted to talk in Spanish and some in English, I chose nautical language which seemed to work well.

Nautical language! Cable. fathom, barnacle etc.

I drove poor Von in her car. Although to be fair I only forgot which side of the road the once! Then back to head quarters for a Paella lunch and finish sorting the washing plus Saffy wanted another sleep! We chatted some more over lunch and then I walked Saffy before her dinner and then...another sleep! it's a dogs life.

Thursday 18th April 2019

Had a bit of a late start today after another late night. We had breakfast and then went to have a wonder round San Javier. Nice town with a big church that was very noisy! (bells) we stopped for a quick coffee and some cake. 

 Noisy church!

Arches leading to the amphitheater

We walked past a park where there is a set of arches leading to an amphitheater where they hold amongst other things a large jazz festival. There was also a statue of a bloke stealing a cross while trying to escape on a ball!

San Francisco Javier

We then drove down to the beach by the Mar Menor which is like an inland sea. 

We anchored just off shore about a week ago.

Fancy road arch as we approached the Mr Minor area

Saffy and myself are now back on board Thésée after getting a bit lost on the way back. 

So: shopping tomorrow and a few more jobs before we have to collect the admiral from the airport. The weather looks a bit miserable for the next few days and it's raining now.

Friday 19th April 2019 (Good Friday)

Well it would be a good Friday if the rain would stop. It's been a pretty miserable day here, wet and cold. Reminds me of home. The trouble is the wind blows the fine sand over from the Sahara and then when it rains the boat looks like it's covered in a thin layer of red mud.

Fine red sand deposited on deck

I went for a quick walk into town to see if I could find a barber. All closed! They take Easter seriously here. I stumbled on some local lads dressed up for some sort of battle thing near the castle we told you about the other day. Anyway they did some sort of dance thing with their flags. 

Local lads dancing with flags!

There was some sort of medieval market set up in the court yard of the castle thing and the lads came dancing through banging their drums.

Medieval market

There was also a church open in a corner of the courtyard, it looked quite nice so I took a sneaky photo. Bit scary as all the women were chanting at something in the corner out of sight!

Scary church goers

I spent a couple of hours assembling a filter system for the water on the boat. I bought these the other day from Leroy Merlin (B&Q). A couple of times I've gone to fill up or wash down and the water has run brown for the first few minutes. We don't drink the water from the tanks and we also put a purifier in when we fill up but I don't wont dirty water going in the tanks.

Filter bits ready to be assembled

50 micron filter then a crystal filter to remove lime scale

In place and ready to use

It will only be brought out when we fill the tanks: Bow 235 litres and Port 235 litres. Connect the hose and water flows through the filters and into the tanks. Now we are getting further into the Med the marinas are charging for water, even though its dirty!

I had to go shopping this afternoon, there was a gap in the rain so I went for it. Not really my thing and a new type of supermarket but reasonably successful in the end. Hope Linda appreciates the effort.

Dinners ready dear!

Saturday 20th April 2019

Well not much to say really. I went to pick Linda up from Alicante airport last night. I got lost again! It rained! no I mean it rained! the roads where all flooded all of the junctions where at least 6 inches deep in water. Clearly the Spanish don't plan for this quantity of rain. The water was gushing up out of the drains and pouring down the streets. Anyway I finally arrived at the airport, I dropped my car park ticket on the floor in my rush to get to arrivals and when we came to leave it jammed the machine, whoops! they had to strip the machine down to retrieve it. I left them to it in the end and they issued a new ticket for me. 1 euro fifty cents, really do you think it was worth it guys? the parking guys where really helpful, one asked me if the ticket was wet, I just looked at him, I was soaked!

We got home to Thésée at about 11pm, time for a quick rum and coke, dry things out and warm up a bit. I was up a couple of times in the night checking lines and fenders as is was now blowing 35 to 40 knots with thunder, lightning and horizontal rain. At one point I was woken by the noise of one of the marineros checking lines and fenders for us. Saffy still looks wet and the boat smells of wet dogs, nice. Linda wants to go back to the sunny UK!

Surprisingly we had mossies in the cabin last night and now Linda has a couple more bites.

Welcome home darling. Not many photo's today because of the extra special British weather that has cancelled all the Easter activities this weekend.

Saffy taking a post dinner snooze now things have dried out a little.

Sunday 21st April...

Thank goodness I'm back from the UK and can put a stop to Dean's blogging exploits. Although i must admit he made a good job of it.... except where he mentioned me of course! Well it seems he and Saffy dog had a great time at Aunty Vons without me.

Since i've been back it just has not stopped raining. It's really miserable. Friday night's rain was torrential when i landed at Alicante, and following the thunder & lightning the ensuing windstorm was still going on last night. Quite a shock really as i wasn't expecting it to be so bad. 

 The palm trees taking a battering yesterday

But today our spirits were lifted when Aunty Von and Uncle Jim came to visit and collect their car. It just so happened to be their 38th Wedding Anniversary. We decided to celebrate by having lunch onboard in the warm ...homemade lasagne, chips, salad, peaches, ice-cream, coffee and chocolate. 

 The VIP'S - Happy Anniversary you two

We're now trying to work out Thesee's next move up the coast whilst we're watching the rain outside. Hopefully we'll be in the Balearics within a week or so and the swimsuits can come out. Here's a picture of the rain puddle that's collected in the mainsail lazy bag during the last few hours!!

Monday 22nd April... An early check on the weather showed we had more rain coming this afternoon. Not fancying to get ourselves and Saffy drenched we paid to stay here for one more night. Besides we had a few jobs to do to get the boat ready for the off again. We walked into town and came across this super duper cashpoint, it even has its own canopy.

By late afternoon we were pretty much straight, annoyingly the forecasted rain didn't materialise and we kind of wished we had departed today.  The sea looked calm but we knew it would be worse further offshore. 

Dean's jobs for the day were... 1: Replacing the old anchor light with the bright new one (brought by me in my luggage). It has a photocell which turns the light on at dusk, and off at dawn. This new light has a 15 led bulb and is therefore very bright and takes little power from the batteries. 2: Fill the water tanks via the new filters Dean bought last week. 3: Hose the decks down and get rid of all the horrible sticky mud that had collected during the stormy weather. 4: Attach our two solar lights to the bimini frame.

The bright new anchor light firmly attached to Thesee's backstay

....and one of the solar lights in its new position on the bimini frame

This will be the last blog post entitled 'Hanging around the Costa Blanca'

The next blog post will be entitled ' Countdown to the Balearics'