september, 2004

hi folks --

am heading out of the med now, and getting the boat ready to sail back
across the atlantic, hopefully to brazil.  keep meeting boats that went
to way cool places and loved it -- like croatia or malta or tunisia.
oh well, we needed to ditch the comfy day sails along the spanish coast
and just go overnight till we got there to see far away places like that.

this month has been boat chores, and either rookie crew or no crew. first
crew was adam from hungary who got great sailing, good winds, nice anchorages,
and ok towns to explore.  second crew was vin from boulder.  vin got an
endless set of boat chores and one overnight with no wind so we had to
motor all the way (cartegena to almeria along the mediterranean coast of
spain).  needless to say vin's view of sailing with evi doesnt match adams.

on the boat chores list, we painted the bottom of the boat, rebuilt the
pressure water pump, installed a new automatic switch for the bilge pump,
repaired the stern running lite, changed oil, changed zincs, greased the
prop, cleaned the raw water filter, cleaned and re-zinced the heat exchanger,
changed feul filters, ...  painting the bottom is a terrible job and i should
have paid someone to do it, but the boat yard didnt seem to have staff for
that sort of thing, just staff to pull the boat out and put it back in again.
needed a whole body glove, not just the throwaway rubber gloves i have to
protect yourself from paint and grime. i now have a few sets of clothes
that are for dirty jobs.  took them to a laundry where they do it for you,
but they still didnt come clean.

i sailed back from the boat yard where we hauled out to almeria where my
sails were being worked on single handed for the first time since the azores.
it was only 5 miles, no wind, no sweat i thought.  but there was still 
my nemisis -- parking. i asked the folks at the boat yard who spoke spanish
to call the marina in almeria and tell them i was coming and was alone and
would need help parking.  they said no sweat, someone would look out for me.
what i hadnt realized was that i was arriving during siesta time, so anyone
helping me was unhappy at having siesta interrupted and in a hurry to get
back to siesta.  i got the lines all ready for the typical med-moor parking
job, lines on each side of the front, draped over the bow so they could be
reached from the dock, fenders on each side to keep you off the boats you
are parking between.  then i called on the radio and sure enough there was
someone there who said something in spanish that i understood to mean he
would come and help.  my call gave the boat name and said i was solo, the
spanish word for alone.  next i poke my nose into the harbor and the 
marinera guy is there but motioning me to hurry up and to park alongside
the waiting dock, not in a med-mooring spot.  so my ropes are all wrong,
fenders are half right, half wrong, and he wants me to hurry up.  there
is wind by this time blowing me off the dock.  i should have just turned
around and gotten the ropes right, but instead i let myself be yelled/motioned
into coming in and parking anyway.  big mistake.  i got the boat close, but
the wind was blowing it off.  threw lines and of course they missed or fell
in the water because i was trying to hurry.  ended up 10 ft from the dock,
with 2 lines ashore, a very angry marinera, and an unwieldy boat that i
was trying to keep between the boat behind me (big fat powerboat at right
angles to me) and the rocks ahead.  not pretty, but got it done.  almost
nudged the power boat, but caught it just in time.

stayed in almeria till my sails were done and scored a great spanish sunday
dinner at the sailmakers house in cabo de gata, the cape that separates
the hairy, windy part of the straits of gibraltar and the med from the
calmer no wind part of the med.

then sailed single-handed to gibraltar.  it was 150 miles and i had winds
from the east so it was fine.  winds were light -- it was up with the sails, 
down with the sails and start the motor, then up the sails, etc.  after a
few up/downs i got in the swing of things and ended up motor sailing.  didnt
worry about the tide because i thought if i stayed near the land on the gib
side i could get out of most of it.  the tidal current runs 2+ knots so does
matter.  i ended up having about 1.5 knots of current with me for the last
4 hours, so it was fine.

had to park twice in gibraltar, first at the customs dock, a floating dock
that you park at normally and then either had to anchor or to park at the
marina.  the first parking was picture perfect.  i got the boat stopped 
right beside the dock, jumped off, tied it up short amid-ships, and then 
tied the bow and stern.  just like all the others were supposed to be.
the parking at the marina was not so smooth, there was no space so i was
going to raft up to another boat.  that should have been easy too and i
had talked to the woman on the other boat (her husband was asleep) and she
said she would help.  i got there ready to do my same deal, take a middle
line onto the other boat and tie it up short.  did that and got onto the
other boat with the line and found there was nothing to tie it to, no center
cleat, no winch or other strong thing to tie to, nothing.  so i gave the
stern line to the woman on the boat and i held the middle line and the boat
tried to pull it away from me.  someone from the dock got on the inside
boat and held the middle line for me so i could get the bowline and also
figure out how to tie up the middle.  finally got it ok.  made two wrong
assumptions: that there would be a cleat in the middle of the boat and that
the woman on the boat would know how to tie up a line.  but i made it.

got invited to dinner that night which was good because i was pretty tired
from staying awake all night.

hung out in gibraltar for about a week. its a hippie boat haven, full of
derelict boats and seemingly derelict people. collected my repaired wind
generator, copied some charts of brazil and the coast of west africa,
almost bought out the chandlery (boat store), and did a raft of boat chores.
most important was getting the liferaft serviced.  i went to the shop doing
it and watched as they inflated it.  seems like a nice one and now i know
whats inside it.

also ordered a watermaker that you tow behind the boat, takes a tenth or a
knot from your speed and makes 2 liters of water per hour.  deal was if they
could ship it in time to my nieces so they could bring it with them, then
i would buy it.  they said no sweat, i gave my credit card number.  i usually
use the credit card just for airline tickets, so the software looking for
fradulent use kicked in and said no to the watermaker.  tried another card
and it said the same thing.  finally talked the company into shipping the
watermaker to jeff, a crew member coming from california and meanwhile i
sent them a personal check for it.  at the last minute they decided to ship
it to gibraltar and neglected to mention it.  of course, thats the day i
decided to leave gibraltar so i wasnt even there.  they had another customer
in gib and gave him my watermaker as well.  so now my watermaker is on the
danish boat called vega and we are hoping to connect in madiera.  not too
impressed with the logistical skills of this british company that makes the
watermakers.

i left gibraltar heading for ayamonte on the spanish/portugese border.  was 
alone but had had enough sleep and sailing along nicely in pretty stiff winds
(20-25 knots) and moderate seas (2-3 meters).  i have a policy of turning off
the automatic bilge pump switch because it cycles the pump too much when
sailing.  except my new switch doesnt, so this is a bad idea.  also have a
policy of checking the bilge every hour when sailing -- good idea if you 
actually do it.  i did it for a while, and then didnt for several hours 
while beating into pretty big waves that came crashing over the bow of the
boat quite often.  big mistake.  at 3am i went below to find 2 inches of
water over the floor boards.  yikes.  turned on the electric bilge pump and
started pumping with the hand pump as well.  didnt really know where the 
water was coming from, so i would pump till my arms were tired, then run
around looking for the source.  checked all the thru hulls, all ok.  checked
all the hoses on the plumbing and the engine, all ok.  so it was coming over
the bow and into the anchor locker and down the hole with the chain.  i
was still pumping hard, and decided to slow the boat down.  had been motor
sailing with just the jib up.  cut the engine and put the boat in neutral,
but that didnt slow me down, so i rolled in the jib.  in doing so in the
strong winds, i had to use the winch and couldnt hold the sheet line to keep
back pressure on the sail as i wound it in.  got the sail in and noticed that
the sheet had pulled thru the blocks because i had forgotten to put a figure
8 know in its end and had gone in the water.  was a bit rough so i decided
to leave the rope in the water till i got the boat under control and got
the water pumped out of it.  sound sensible, but big mistake #2.  still
pumping and now with no sail or engine the boat is broadside to the waves
and flopping around in the lumpy seas.  so without thinking i put the engine
in forward, the gas at a bit over idle and the autopilot in the right direction
so the boat went into the waves and was more stable.  went back to the hand
pump and all of a sudden the engine just stopped.  my engine never stops like
that.  looked forward and there was the jib sheet in the water, but now it
was tight and pulling the sail out a bit.  jib sheets are long, they come
all the way back to the cockpit and are plenty long enough to reach from the
front of the boat, into the water and back to the propellor and wrap around it.

so there i was, middle of the night, no engine, too rough to go in the water
and get the rope off the propellor.  nothing left to do but figure out an
alternate port to go to and sail there.  my best alternate port was cadiz,
in a big bay only 20 miles away, but upwind.  but i'm a sailboat, i should
be able to do this.  used a dock line as a jib sheet to replace the one
hugging my prop. started sailing at about 45 degrees, needed to go more
like 20 degrees, so had to tack as i got near land.  just as i tacked there
was a wind shift, so on the other tack i could only go about 270 degrees,
and sometimes only 240 degrees.  a quick calculation said that was about
150 degrees and i was not going to make it.  seemed wrong, my boat goes 
closer to the wind than that even with the main sail reefed. tacked a
couple of hours later and could sail due north or even west of north,
so it was a wind shift not my boat or my lousy sail trim.  sailed into
cadiz bay to a marina that was next to a little bay where i could anchor
if i couldnt get towed to a dock.  but when i finally got there, the marina's
marinero was there in a little boat to tow me to the dock.  whew.  i had 
talked to the marina earlier and gotten a lady who spoke english.  when
i arrived and called on the radio i got a man who spoke only spanish.  i
tried to talk to him with marginal success.  he said the lady was terminado
(gone home i guess) and he was preparado (ready maybe).  i said i was solo
(alone) and no motore.  thats all the spanish i knew.  but it all worked out.

next morning i dove on the prop and got the rope off.  the engine started
right up and wonderland seemed no worse for the experience, except that 
everything was wet and soggy, including some tools and spares that are
happier when not all salty.

the next day a huge french trimaran parked next to me.  it was the boat
IDEC with francis joyon aboard that holds the worlds record for single
handed sailing around the world, something like 72 days.  he is here to
try for a record for the discovery route, from cadiz to san salvador in
the bahamas like columbus did.  he will leave for that about the time
that i leave for the canaries, but i'm not likely to see him since he goes
30 knots or so.  the boat is about 15 years old and looks a bit like a 
dog lifting its leg to pee.  one of the outside hulls is out of the water,
depending on which tack you are on.  the thing is 28 meters long and 16
meters wide -- and i though i had parking problems.

have gotten my crew back again and we are getting ready to head to madiera
and the canaries.  crew is two nieces, hannah and susha, and a friend of
a friend, cricket jeff.

hugs.

-evi