may, 2004


after the big storm i got pretty cautious about weather and let some fine
days go by because the wind was in the wrong direction or too strong.  it
also took a long while to leave almeria because we had made friends with
the local sailors, fishermen, sailmaker, and free wireless internet.

one of the friends, federico, taught sailing, had his own 28 ft. boat
and just happened to have a few spare sails.  i have no spare sails,
the main is original with the boat (1989), the jib i got new when i
bought the boat (2001), and my storm sail i got at the wonderful used
boating equipment store in annapolis maryland.  but no spares.  federico
wanted to get rid of the spares he had, one he found washed up on the
beach and waited a year for someone to claim it, the other i never heard
the origin of.  we measured them and they are both smaller than wonderland's
equivalent sail, but seem a fine size for spares when crossing oceans.
so the big storm that pushed us into almeria and introduced us to the
local sailing and fixing community had a bright side to it.  i scored
a spare main and jib that need only a little tweaking (like new sail
slides and battens) to fit wonderland.

federico and his friends also cooked fish on the bbq on the dock about once
a week. their cooking place was right next to our boat, so we got invited.
the first time it was baracuda, very yummy and ok to eat here, although in
the caribbean its suspect and poison if bigger than 3 or 4 ft. long.  one
of the people at the cookout was sebastian, a local diver/fisherman, who
had rescued a sea turtle from the fishing nets.  he invited us to come 
along on the set-the-turtle-free trip the next day.  they blindfolded the
turtle so he wouldnt be scared at the 20 or so people gawking at its
release.  we got some nice pictures.

another nice feature of the almeria marina, aside from the price (7 euros
per day instead of the typical 20-30) was an open wireless network connection.
with my little antenna and lucent wireless card it was practically like home.

bob hein from boulder came to visit for a week or so and brought with
him about 50 pounds of junk i had asked for, including about 20 lbs of
pistacios and the yummiest chocolate biscotti.  he also brought a little
whizzy device called a blackberry that uses the cell phone network to
do email and web.  his service had no surcharge for international use,
so we suddenly had email everywhere, even while sailing.  its little
and you type with your thumbs.  my nieces soon were skipping the pricy
internet cafes and sending all their mail from bobs toy.  we called
susha thumbster because she was always sitting in the cockpit typing
emails with her thumbs.

we finally did sail to san jose, just around cabo de gata, a cape that is
supposed to have some of the fiercest winds in the med.  and it does.  the
day we sailed around it was fine and we managed to med moor in the tiny
harbor on the third try.  there was only one place big enough for me to
turn around, right at the harbor entrance, so when i poked my nose in
and was heading for the waiting dock a marinera (dock hand is probably
the closest translation) waved me toward another berth.  i was too far
to get to it, so turned around and went out for try number two.  the
marinera got tired waiting for me so he split when i came in the second
time and i bailed again and went back out.  the wind was blowing about
15-20 knots and parking a big sluggish boat in a tiny looking slot between
two boats that dont want to be bumped is daunting, especially if your 
tendency is to be over-cautious and go too slow.  but on the third try
the marinera was there and we made it.

once we were there, the wind picked up and stayed strong for days and
days.  we were pinned to the wall, nose to, as the winds of 30 knots, 
gusting to 48 kept trying to push wonderland into the wall.  i finally
put extra lines across other boats to a cleat on a wall and put the
stern lines to hold us off the wall on my winches so i could tighten
them up and not smash into the wall.  san jose is a nice little town
but one that can be totally explored in about a day, so being stuck
there for a week in shrieking winds was not ideal.

bob is a fix it kind of guy and i took advantage of him to get lots of
little chores on the boat done.  we concentrated on my wind generator
that has never worked correctly.  originally it charged my batteries
fine but also put 12 volts across my lifelines and did lots of electrolysis
damage.  then it got "fixed" by the dealer, but still didnt work. then
i got sent new rectifiers which bob and i installed and everything tested
out ok with the meter.  but when we put the thing back on the boat (a major
ordeal that involved two people standing on the top rail of the stern
pulpit and holding the 30 lb sucker over their heads as one fed the wires
down the tube to someone below and the other tried to slide the collar
over the tube, with the wind blowing too hard and the boat rocking), anyway
when it was all put back and hooked up, it didnt turn.  the wind was going
15 knots or so and we should have seen it spinning happily and producing about
3 amps of power.  instead it just sat there.  and wouldnt even spin when we
started it by hand.  sigh.  took it down, and gave up.

the wind in san jose finally tamed a bit and a nice day with winds from
the west arrived and we were able to sail on to cartegena.  got there about
an hour before my nieces mom, candy, arrived by train from nice.  nice is
in france and quite a ways from cartegena, but our ambitious sailing plans
prompted libby to suggest that her mom fly to nice.  24 hrs later on trains
and busses her mom finally dragged baggage that was again mostly for the
boat into cartegena, totally jetlagged and trainlagged. 

we bought a bike in cartegena.  candy and i went to get one just like on
a boat down the dock from us and then pretended that she had won it in
the lottery. the girls were trying to talk her into leaving it on the boat
and she was pretending that it would be nice to take home now that her
baggage wasnt so big.  she kept up the story for a couple of days, meanwhile
the girls had told the whole dock that their mom had won the bike.  a bike
really expands your exploring realm.  the bike was advertised as aluminium
and stainless steel, but i should have had my magnet in my pocket when i was
buying it.  when i checked it later it has lots of plain old steel in it.
but for the moment its nice and shiny.

our next stops were torrevieja (anchored one night), alicante (marina 5
nites) and altea (marina 2 nites).  alicante has an awesome castle on a
hill overlooking the town.  we were there for 5 days, but somehow didnt
find time to climb up to the castle.  not sure what we did.  

we all went running in alicante and after the first 100 yards, the girls
asked if i was wearing a bra.  sure i said.  how old is it they asked.
about 15 years i said.  do you have others they asked.  sure, one i said
and admitted it was maybe 10 years old.  once back at the boat they
inspected my bras, declared them totally strectched out with dead elastic
and decided we should go bra shopping.  they took me to compte de anglais,
a huge department store that had a whole floor just for bras.  but they
were all designed for skinny teenagers with tiny boobs, nothing just plain
and white and not lacy and comfortable and designed for big, sagging, tired
old boobs.  i kept asking about this one or that one and each time i liked
one it was for nursing mothers and so not appropriate.  after trying on
about a dozen, i settled on 2 that were a bit too small but not too bad.
a couple of days later, i noticed that my left shoulder was cut thru by
the bra strap, definitely not so comfortable, so i'm back in my old faithfuls,
except when we go running.

another accomplishment in alicante was propane.  american boats use propane
in the little 20 lb tanks, i have 2. each tank lasts me about 2 months.
europeans use butane in different tanks.  my system has a safety solenoid
so that if there was ever a fire at the stove i could throw a breaker
and it would cut off the gas.  we last filled up in portugal and had
run out of one tank a few weeks earlier and had been looking ever since.
in cartegena we spent 32 euros on a taxi ride that went from pillar
to post following peoples directions to no avail.  the last person
we were sent to produced a paper in english that explained that due
to new EU rules they were no longer allowed to fill anyones propane tanks.
all you could do was exchange an empty tank for a full one and all they
had was butane.  in alicante we were told that you had to have a license
to buy propane.  but we decided to call anyway and were redirected to
a technician who came to look at our tanks (ready to fill them),
found he couldnt because of the american left hand thread on the
bottles, and then said he could sell us a new tank, full of propane,
and a new regulator and hook it all up for just 60 euros.  we said
yes and now have a tank that is about 6 inches too high, but works
like a charm.  and we can refill it in spain.  as soon as we are in france
or italy, we are back to square one, but at least we can cook for now.

i did a day of boat chores after our visitors left (bob from cartegena and
candy from alicante), changed oil and filter, cleaned raw water intake,
made a pin for my new anchor (22 kg plow) and my usual oil/grease everything
in sight so it will still move next time you try to screw/unscrew it.

we did an overnight sail (70 miles) to the island called formentera in
the balearics.  got up at 2am to leave so we would be sure to arrive in
daylight.  the harbor at altea was so lit up that we could see to get
out in the dark.  there was no wind at first, but then it picked up and
we had a beautiful sail, 6 knots all the way in 10-15 knots of wind on
the beam.  anchored in a nice bay that is protected except from the
north.  formentera seems to have avoided most of the tourist development
that you see in other spanish cities.  blocks and blocks of ugly
apartments overlooking the sea and sold as second homes to british
and germans.  must be a comment on the weather in brittan or germany
in the winter, but it sure ruins some beautiful places on the coast
of spain.

so we finally made it to the balearics, about 2 months after i thought
we would be here.  so much for precision planning on a sailboat.  we have
scaled down our plans for the rest of the summer, skipping corsica even
though both libby and i speak french, and going straight to sardinia from
the balearics.  when we get to sardinia we will decide on a leisurely
cruise along the coast stopping at lots of little harbors or a big sail
to sicily and around into the adriatic.  we hear that july and august
are very crowded in sardinia/sicily and so would like to get to the
adriatic, but it looks awfully far on the charts.

we are all learning a bit of spanish, and as in every language there are
words that sound similar, one with a common meaning and one with a totally
different meaning.  libby went to the grocery store in the big town on this
island, sant francisc, 3 km down the road.  it was her day to cook and she
wanted two chicken breasts.  so she asked for "dos filetes de polla".  the
meat counter guy's face looked surprised, skocked, amused as he said "what".
libby blushed, realizing something was wrong and pointed to the chicken
breasts, repeating her request.  the meat guy corrected her, saying "dos
filetes de pollo" and was too embarrased to try to explain the difference
between pollo (chicken) and polla (slang for penis).

our next visitors are two teenage boys who have just graduated from high
school.  should be interesting, when mixed in with the energy of my two
20ish nieces.

hugs to all.

-evi