Before leaving Barcelona, we enjoyed the giants festival, see photo. We also visited the well-known apartment building designed by Gaudi, La Pedrera (see photos).
We arrived in Port Ginesta for haul out, see photo. She is certainly huge out of the water. We also enjoyed the service providers who painted her bottom and compounded the hull; see photo. Oh, by the way, check out the picture of Sophia, she has grown tremendously since the last update’s photos.
We are delayed for two more days here in Port Ginesta, Spain, awaiting the arrival of a new voltmeter to replace the one that coincidentally died when we installed our new Mastervolt alternator and regulator. What was supposed to be straightforward well thought out improvement project that was to be relatively inexpensive, turned out to be the project from hell. It involved 3 trips to the alternator shop while in Barcelona, 2 trips to the shop while here in Ginesta, installation of 2 new regulators since the first was defective, replacement of several instrument wires, scrapping of 2 outdated alternators, replacement of a voltmeter, at least 2 weeks delay but we enjoyed wonderful Penedes blanco wine to celebrate our occasional successes. Both Marie and I were impressed with the cooperation and sense of humor shared by everyone helping on the project. Communication of technical and warranty information was a language challenge, but successful. If all goes as planned on Wednesday, May 15, we will depart for Mallorca for a few days and then onto Menorca and then Sardinia.
We have basically completed all of our pending boat projects while in Barcelona and here in Port Ginesta. Our departure was also delayed due to horrible weather (3 lows in the region, the Atlantic is still loaded with lows coming over to visit Europe) that kept us onboard tending to boat and fender watch. We personally saw 42 knots but a fellow US sailboat reported over 50 knots. During some rather heavy weather, we had one of our large fenders pop due to the loads on it. With a quick replacement, we were back in business again. We used the time to make courtesy flags for some of the countries we are planning to visit this year (Italy, Croatia, Greece, Turkey). We were beginning to suffer with cabin fever and welcomed a bit of sunshine and lower wind conditions after 4 days of high winds and rain.
Sunday was Mother’s Day with a much-welcomed email Mother’s Day wish and a phone call from my son, Cory (as most of you know, he and his significant other, Carrie, are our web masters). Congratulations to Carrie as she just received a promotion to the web design department at her company—great news.
Sunday was also exciting in that our kitty, Sophia, fell into the water from the deck of Zelda. Thank goodness I was on deck and heard the splash. I rushed off the boat, net in hand, to pull her out of the drink. Initially, however, I could not see her. After what seemed to be a long time of calling her, a most outrageous screech was heard from the water with her swimming toward me from two boats down the dock. I never saw a swimming cat. She was swimming and screeching at the same time. I swooped her into our net; and needless to say, she was not a happy camper. We then had to shampoo and shower her; we are sure she was thinking enough with the water for one day. After about two hours of shivering, she finally settled down and took a long afternoon nap. Personally, I hope she does not make this a steady habit. She loves to hover on the anchors on the bow so this was bound to happen. Thank goodness we were not underway! Oh, I should mention that as we motored from Barcelona to Port Ginesta, Sophia’s first boat trip, she got seasick; I will leave the details to your imagination.
Zelda is looking great. She has new bottom paint, newly painted boot strip, newly compounded hull and various other maintenance projects completed. We are looking forward to getting underway and enjoying a relaxing sailing season. The weather to date has been a bit unpredictable, warm some days, rainy/windy others. We hope this stabilizes as the spring here moves into summer.
When we departed Barcelona, we sadly bid goodbye to many of our new friends made while wintering in Spain. We continue to stay in touch with many of them via either email, single sideband radio, and cell phone. Some we will surely meet again, some will pass by unseen like ships passing in the night, and sadly, some we will most probably not see again as we head east and they west.
Hope your spring is warming up and you are thinking of some vacation plans. Stay well and stay in touch.
Marie, Terry and Sophia