Making Ready for Sea

It is a strange feeling for us to sit on ‘Bella’ when she is on a cradle on dry land and, I guess, it must be odd for her. After three days, however, she is in more familiar surroundings back in the water feeling happy, we hope, having had her bottom cleaned and painted with antifoul and her body caressed with silicone wax polish.
We have nothing but praise for the crew driving the ‘hoist’ that lifted Bella out of the water and later launched her. They were attentive, polite and fastidious in their care of our treasure. They even wrapped the slings in which the boat sits with polythene to protect the polished surfaces from the dirt and grit of the webbing straps. In thirty years I have never seen that done in England! They only manage to lift out two or three boats a day however!

Certain members of family of whom we are very fond have had some trauma over the last few months. Miggy went back to the UK a week or so ago to see her Father, David, who is having a difficult time post operation and subsequent treatment. Betsy, her mother, has coped not only with David’s poor health but also with a house move at the same time. Miggy was put to work during her stay with electric drill and screwdriver! Neal’s cousin Lorri and husband Jim were coming to see us in Rota for three days but hours before their departure Jim was advised not to fly because of a heart condition. The good news is that the problem may have been the as yet unknown cause of his strokes last year and that there is good reason to believe that an operation on the heart will solve all. We wish them both full recovery and comfort soon.

We took Tom and Louise, fellow yachties moored here at Rota, to Gibraltar by car for the day but most shops were closed much to Louise’s disappointment. Morrison’s was open thank goodness for supplies of things English like bacon, roast beef and proper teabags.

Miggy and I drove around the ‘Rock’ for a while and came across the extraordinary sight of this mosque at Europa Point overlooking the straits and North Africa.

We had a superb lunch on a sun drenched terrace of the Caleta Hotel overlooking the Mediterranean, where Neal spent many a happy evening whilst working in Gibraltar some twenty five years ago. Our waitress from La Linea reckoned Gibraltar was celebrating the Queens birthday. We questioned that and the dear girl came back with the news that it was in fact Commonwealth Day!!! I can’t remember celebrating that in England!

Admire the spring flowers at the foot of the eastern face of the ‘Rock’.

The Sierras in which the Pueblos Blancos are situated and through which we drove on our way back to Rota are shown in this sunrise photograph taken from Rota with the US Naval Base in the foreground.

Miggy has a new toy or, should I say, an extremely useful ‘Reeds Sailmaker’ sewing machine. It is a rugged machine that eats canvas for breakfast and when very hungry can devour a number of layers of thick sailcloth. We bought the machine in Winchester but, because of its weight, we could not bring it in our luggage back to Spain by air. Mary, Miggy’s brother in law’s mother and her husband Peter very kindly bought it to us here in Rota in their car on their way back form the UK to their Spanish home in Sotogrande. We look forward to seeing them again when we are in their area early in April.

Sancti Petri, on the coast a little way south of Cadiz, comprises a ruined fishing village albeit with two working restaurants and bars and a marina for local boats. It is reputedly the summer gathering place for the wealthy Cadiz yacht owners and apparently the anchorage becomes crowded beyond belief at that time. It is a pretty spot but the entrance to this narrow inlet is narrow and tortuous. Not a place to be recommended during the season we think!

The Storks are back in town, on their nests and ready to mate again. The Spanish even build platforms on top of their electricity pylons especially for the birds to build their nests upon. If they didn’t they would nest on the conductors or the insulators!

The marine environment is very harsh and so it is essential to keep up with the maintenance of all aspects of the boat and its fittings. We have a computer schedule programming the time and frequency of around a hundred and seventy maintenance items from polishing the brass clock to climbing the mast to clean spars and rig and to check the rigging and other equipment aloft.

And so we are prepared for sea once again after a six month break here in Rota and Andalucia. We have enjoyed our stay in this beautiful region immensely but are now looking forward to sailing to new cruising grounds. We intend to sail fairly quickly along the Costas del Sol and Blanca and spend the latter part of April and the month of May in the Balearics. In June we will cross to Sardinia and cruise the north and northwest coasts of that Island and the north and west coasts of Corsica before leaving Bella on dry land somewhere near Cagliari on the south coast of Sardinia mid July. We will fly home for the latter part of July and the whole of August, it being silly season for charter boats and inflated prices. On our return at the beginning of September we will explore Sicily and the Italian islands to the south and make our way down to Monastir in Tunisia for the winter. That’s the plan but it is not carved in stone as many things can influence it, not least the weather.

For the early risers in the South Miggy’ next BBC Radio Solent broadcast is scheduled for around 0630 on Wednesday the 25th April.

Carnaval and all that

Malaga quite justifiably has the image of high rise hotels and apartment buildings, lager, bingo and fish and chips. It has however the unexpected redeeming feature of its charming old town complete with Roman amphitheatre, castle, Alcazar and variety of excellent tapas bars and restaurants.

We came across an orange tree that had last year’s oranges, this year’s oranges and sublimely scented blossom that heralds those for next year.

We arrived back in Rota to find Carnaval in full swing. Carnaval involves processions with elaborate themed floats, music, humour, fun and a lot more and the involvement of the community as a whole. The Spanish really do take Carnaval seriously in a very lighthearted atmosphere and it appears that everybody participates. It is the time for families to let their hair down together totally without the UK traits of drunkenness, trouble and the incessant rattling of charity tins.

Good friends also yachting out here, Angie and Jack, were kind enough to drive us to El Puerto de la Santa Maria for the day. We visited the ‘Osborne’ Sherry Bodegas. Sherry making is extremely interesting. And somewhat complicated. We could certainly not encompass all the nuances of its production in one visit but we did learn that there are only three different Sherries, Fino (dry pale), Oloroso (dry or medium) and Pedro Ximenez (sweet or cream) although these can appear in a multitude of brands from varying Bodegas. The dry wines are made with the Palomino grape and the sweet wines with the Pedro Ximenez grape.

All are made in the same way with the three tier Solera system with the newly pressed wine in barrels at the top being mixed with older wine in the intermediate and bottom barrels. Only 40% of wine in each of the tiers is transferred to the barrels below. Fino wine ferments for 3 to 5 years and is formed under a layer of what amounts to the grape skin mould called the ‘flor’, which prevents its oxidization and keeps the wine at around 14% alcohol. The Oloroso and Pedro Ximenez oxidise and stay in the barrels longer and do not form a ‘flor’ and so obtain their redder colour and greater alcohol content – 17% and 20% respectively. There is no ‘vintage’ Sherry as the age of the bottled wine is indeterminate. Because of the 40% mixing rule, the bottom barrel from which the wine to be bottled is drawn, may contain new wine and old wine of any age, even a modicum of that which is as old as the Bodegas itself, around 200 years! It is all much more complicated than this of course. Interestingly however the barrels are stored in high vaulted rooms with open windows all year round. The temperature must be in the range 10ºC to 20ºC and the humidity above 50%. Humidity in the Jerez triangle is always above 50% and covering the floors with water – an old Arab trick - controls the high summer temperatures.

The tasting after the tour was exemplary. We were invited to sup as much as we wished not only of the sherry placed on the table but also of other varieties including brandy, which is distilled from Sherry. We could have been there all day until carried out unconscious! Did we?

Suffice it to say that we eventually made our way to Romerijo’s seafood restaurant where one purchases from a counter a selection from an enormous array of fish and shellfish freshly boiled or fried. This is served in paper cones that one takes to a table where a waiter provides napkins and a large waste bucket for the shells and takes ones order for bread and drinks. We had large boiled prawns, smaller fried prawns, fried squid, fried roe and fried anchovies. It was delicious particularly when washed down with a bottle of wine.

It is now only a few weeks until we set sail for the Mediterranean and we have been attending to our programme of maintenance, cleaning and painting anything that doesn’t move (oiling teak actually). Neal has been fitting new toys bought out from the UK including an SSB Radio receiver that interfaces with the laptop to provide weather pictures like those you see on telly with all the lines. The closer they are the more it’ll blow!

Those of you within range of BBC Radio Solent may have heard Miggy’s dulcet tones on Monday the 5th of March. Her next broadcast is scheduled for the 25th of April at which time we should be in the Balearics.