We motor-sailed passed Barcelona in the small hours of Saturday night and Sunday morning; a shimmering band of light between the rolling sea and the hazy clouded sky, filtering the moonlight and hiding all the planets, save Venus.
We had had a rollicking sail in 18-25 knots of wind, with a sea on the quarter and maxing at 2m-high waves. The broad beam and twin rudders of Missy Bear stuck hard into the water and preventing a sliding, rolling motion; she felt very stable. As one rudder lost grip, the other bit.
As we approached the marina at about 02:00, Mike called a friend of his on channel 09 VHF, to ask him to meet us. I went down below to rouse Alix to say we were soon to arrive, but she was spark out, so I left her to catch up on some hard-earned sleep.
I told Mike I was happy to park the boat and positioned the boat ready for our stern-to approach. A quick burst of bow thruster got her bow nicely in position. What I learned later is that the burst of propeller had given Alix a fright; the bow thruster is under the berth in the bow, about 1 foot from her sleepy head. It is not a quiet piece of kit!
Anyway, another park was safely and finely executed, and we were soon tied up with two lazy lines off the bow, and sipping a cold, celebratory beer. We slept like logs until about 9 am.
As per Alix’s post – ‘Tick Tock, Schengen Clock - Simon from Sunbird in Palma turned up on Monday for a fleeting visit. He has lived here in Spain for over 40 years, since the Franco days, when his parents emigrated there from the Wirral. He has worked in boat sales since then.
I gave him a thorough debrief of how we had felt the handover with Sunbird/SAS had gone so far. I didn’t pull any punches, but even Alix said afterwards that I was clear and fair. Simon said he needed to go away, have a think and make some phone calls. He then offered to take us to lunch. To be honest, we didn’t really feel like it, but we felt a bit churlish refusing. In the end Simon said “just say yes”. And, so we did. Just before food was delivered, a Spanish chap called Antonio (Toni) turned up, and Simon took Toni through our list of issues in fluent Spanish.
The last couple of days have been generally working on and off with local Spanish fitters, Mark and his girlfriend Celia (pronounced Thelia), to try and get all our missing kit procured and installed and a few snags sorted. They are very busy and are fitting us in around their day jobs. Yesterday for example, they showed up at 7pm and finished at 10pm, well after dark.
Our Torqeedo and spare battery arrived at the capitania yesterday, and Toni fetched them to us in his van. We are charging them using shore power, as there were no 12v chargers included. So that's something, with remote help from Thorne, that we will have to track down in the next day. We have always designed the boat to be off-grid for days at a time, and we will need planty of outboard power to get from our anchorages to thos lovely beach bars.
Anyway, all that is left to fix is trivial. We can live without a water filter, for example. We were just hoping to keep plastic bottles to a minimum.
The only thing really holding us back if the lack of a dinghy. Apparently, it has been delivered to Canet for checking, and has been forwarded here. But no-one has a tracking number and no-one knows when it may turn up.
There is a good window of weather over next few days to set off for Sardinia. So Alix and I are hoping a large cardboard box turns up at the capitania with our name on it. And then we can get going on Missy Bear’s Maiden Voyage!!
