Falshator: Spanish Coast

Spanish Coast

After leaving Roses, we sailed down the coast to Blanes with the Gennaker in full flight. Its something I’ve noticed up here is that very few boats actually fly Gennakers or Spinnakers. I don’t know the reason for this, maybe its too much like hard work!

Hard work-yeah right!

We anchored just off the beach at Blanes and went ashore, up the steep coarse sandy beach. They were having a local Ceremony celebrating their past and had large manikins depicting the early settlers that a person gets up inside and walks it down the Promenade. Some of them dance around in circles, these things were up to 5 meters high, how they didn’t fall over I don’t know.

We had a cheap meal here, Tapas, wine and Beer for 9.50 Euro! Once again the town waterfront was full of families of all ages having a good time and it just endorses the point of how valuable they hold their Family units.

From Blanes we sailed further down to Barcelona where we pulled into Port Olympica Marina. There is nowhere on this part of the coast for anchoring as it is all open to the elements and there are no bays as such.

Barcelona is a city bustling with people and the ambience is one of a buoyant economy even though they are still struggling to get out of the Recession. There are several Tower Cranes and demolition going on, which is a sign that things are happening. The people are friendly and I can imagine it must have been a great place to be when the Olympics were held here in the early Nineties. The remnants of which are still apparent and are kept in good order. We took an Open Top Bus again and one of the stops was right outside the main Olympic Stadium which is open to the Public and free entry. Once we got our bearings of where things were after the Bus, we hired a Scooter for the day, something I just had to do before leaving Europe!

The Scooter was great fun and ideal for getting around the city without worrying about parking etc. You just pull up on the footpath and leave it there. We went up to the castle that overlooks Barcelona to check it out. The castle had had a chequered past, with many different uses over time including a Prison with terrible Tortures and Killings, and at one stage under Military rule actually launched periodic attacks on its own city of Barcelona to show them who’s Boss. It was a castle that was not held in great regards by the local Community for a long time and was deemed the ‘Evil Castle.’ It all just reinforced the realization in our minds of how much History and turmoil Europe had gone through to get to where it is today, unlike us from little New Zealand with only a history of a couple of Hundred years.

While we were in the Olympica marina, I thought Id check to see how much it was to pull boats out of the water here and it was the cheapest price so far that I had come across. I had to take the boat out of the water at some stage to take the Water maker intake out and put it back in the right way around. It had been put in backwards in Croatia as they reckoned that was the ‘right way’ but once underway, it would lose its prime in sloppy seas, take a gulp of air and refuse to re-prime. So this had to be done before we took on the Atlantic Crossing.

Any way, while lifting the boat out, the boys on the Crane were in a bit of a rush and while I was putting towels down the front bow to protect it from the Strops, the guy was lifting the boat and caught the rear strop on the Prop. I yelled at him to hang on but it was too late and it bent the Prop shaft.

The boat had to go up on the hard longer than expected as we had to wait for the replacement Shaft to come from Belgium and things don’t happen fast up here in this neck of the woods.

Characters you meet

We were on the hard for 7 days and it wasn’t one of the most pleasant places to be with dust and dirt everywhere and having to climb approx. 5 meters up and down the Ladder to get off and on. Things like going to the Toilet and even cooking and doing dishes were an effort. The people we met there on the other boats were characters and it made the stay a bit more bearable.

Yockhim was a German, married to a Dominican Republic lady, whom he’d left at home to run the Business, bought a cheap 5 metre Yacht and went sailing. He had no idea when he may go home again and didn’t seem too worried about it either.

He had come to grief on a beach where he ran aground and the waves had snapped his retractable Keel off, so was trying to get that fixed. He lived on the sniff of an oil Rag and smelt like one too, but he was really humorous and looked at Life in a great manner.

Through him we met ‘Hugh’ while over at his boat one night for a drink. Now Hugh was larger than life itself, and at 65, was in peak condition endorsing this the first time we met him by showing us how supple he was, and the positions he could get his body into. He looked like a cross between a sixties Hippy and Jesus.

He had done about all there was to do in life, from playing music with the best Musicians in the world to being a master Boat Builder. Music production, Cinema photography for the BBC, you name it he had done it. How he managed to fit all that in to his 65 years was amazing and he was also Heir to the ‘Tetley Teas’ family fortune as well. With that fortune that he was due to receive once his Mother past away, he was not going to spend it, he was going to put Giant Declination Plants in the Caribbean Islands to give them Fresh water to get the Community to thrive again, a remarkable man.

Then there was another young guy whose name escapes me that was working on one of the boats there and doing a great job. He had come from Venezuela and was lucky to get out with his life. Whilst in Venezuela, local thugs had kidnapped him and they tried to get money out of his family. He managed to talk his way out of it some how and they dumped him and his dog out in the middle of nowhere, stole his car and left him naked. He jumped on a plane to Spain the next day and hasn’t been back. He warned us to be very careful whilst sailing past this part of the world when we do, something that I already had in mind and wasn’t really looking forward to.

After 7 days, we were nearly gong crazy( well crazier) and it was good to get Falshator back in the water when we did. We filled her up with Diesel and head for the Balearics. It was another frustrating leg with no wind to speak of and we motored most of the way. We could have waited for better wind conditions but we felt we’d already overstayed our time in Barcelona, beautiful as it was, it was time to go.

Our first fish caught off the Boat, great eating!!

We arrived in Palma de Mallorca, and backed Falshator into the berth to find our friends Kerry and Janice Mair from NZ right opposite us. It was great to catch up with them and we had dinner at the Yacht Club there with them and a few quiet dinks later on board Falshator, that went on till three in the morning.

Here we ran into difficulty getting our replacement Docking Station for the Sat phone into the country. Spanish Customs had held it and wouldn’t release it until we paid 250 euro in Taxes and Duty! I put it to them that we were a ‘Yacht in Transit’ and were not importing it into the EU. They said I had to get a Custom Agent to represent me, I got away with not paying the Taxes, but with Agents fees, DHL fees, duty etc, it still cost 208 Euro, they always win.

The weather is hot and the skies blue, I think we are going to enjoy cruising these Islands!