Crunch time for the man and the mast!

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Making progress this week has felt a bit like wading through mud or trying to herd chooks! 🙄 Our jobs list is growing like Jack’s beanstalk at one end, as fast as we tick things off the other!!

We are preparing take the boat out of the water to paint the hull with anti fouling, replace through hulls etc – all the jobs that can’t be done in the water. We also hope that the frame to hold the solar panels and wind generator and dingy davits etc will be done this week.

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Some new experiences this week included:

• Aussie visitors! We had a super fun time with our first AUSSIE visitors, Per and Wendy! (Well Per may still be a little bit Swedish, but really as Aussie as they come after 30 years!) Our guests joined us over the weekend at the end of their trip through parts of Europe. By the time they reached us their step count for the month blew our minds- they had covered many miles on foot – and most of their walking miles included significant changes in elevation it seems!

• Having legs waxed in Spain…..

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Best:

• Aussie visitors!

• Visiting Llafranc, as suggested by Per. Llafranc is a beautiful little town about 2 hours north of Barcelona, with a pretty beach, and refreshingly cool water. The lively cafes provide a colourful backdrop, and lend a friendly vibe. The clifftop walk that departs the south side of the beach is truly spectacular!

• Scaling the mast for real many times, and solving many problems with lights, wiring, halyards, windex etc

Worst:

• Bleeding blisters from winching the Captain up the mast – not on my hands, but inside of right knee from bracing so hard against the cockpit wall … but I toughened up after day 1 – no more bleeding! (Also…. I went up more often, and let the Captain do the heavy lifting sometimes, shoulder permitting.)

• Uncertainty about our possibility to actually cross the Atlantic after reaching the Canary Islands. So much is unknown for us with regard to Magnus’s shoulder recovery. Further injury would really be unwise for long term shoulder function, so we need to minimise risks as far as we can. We will know more as we begin to sail I guess. Uncertainty is of course part of the adventure, but there is a fine line between struggling with constant uncertainty, and embracing the exciting adventurous part of this unknown.

Funniest:

• The Swedes cackling wholeheartedly at their own old Swedish jokes, and then cackling even more at their inability to translate them to make any sense in English. (who is Bellman anyway?)

• Me still being a little chuffed that you can buy real Nikes at the supermarket!

• Meeting a pet pig called Ellie in Barcelona on a Saturday afternoon, hanging around the leafy streets that surround Sagrada Familia, as you do!

• Aforementioned leg wax, performed by the same technician who coloured my hair last time. I suspect he may moonlight as a sumo wrestler, because I think most of my leg hair was removed by the sheer force of his application of the wax ….he really put his back into it! The wax was dispensed from a squeezy bottle. Whaat? Because I am a newbie to Spanish leg waxing techniques, and completely at a loss when it comes to an added Vietnamese twist-I do not know where this sits in terms of normal procedure. However, I did feel the need to stay out of the sun and salt water for a few days – as I think my legs were missing several layers of skin post procedure! Cheap though!👍😂

• Watching my friend Wendy in action, expertly working her cheeky feminine charm, with the occasional perfectly timed toss of her beautiful silvery locks to garner special privileges for us, most fortuitously access to a luxurious private hotel toilet – instead of having to find a one euro coin, and then a filthy public loo in Barcelona!! You go girl!

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Food and bevvy highlights:

• Fresh tuna, caught in the Mediterranean by our neighbour on her way back from Ibiza – cooked and eaten with jetty neighbors, accompanied by a very nice rose brought by another neighbour.

• Seafood paella at Castelldefels in super company, and a seafood platter eaten in the same good company in Barcelona

• Verdejo was our choice with the paella, and we discussed and trialled the merits of beer, a caprinya, or a cheeky Tempranillo with the fried seafood. Personal preference was the decision- all of the bevvies had something to add to the food.

• Creamy chicken w pesto from the pantry…because cream is all you need, The Beatles almost said?

• A dark Nestle chocolate “Dolca” accidently discovered in Carrefour, kind of like Old Gold? In the “amount you can eat at one sitting” measuring scale of deliciousness – it was half gone in one evening ….. enough said.

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Boat work:

• Changed engine prefilter.
• Pulled muffler apart and with Per’s help, identified the source of a water leak. We will need to replace a part or the whole muffler
• Garmin in reach arrived
• Solar panels arrived
• Harness arrived.
• Mast work! We went up the mast probably 10 times? This was worthwhile though, because we got better at the process, and managed to replace the deck and motoring lights, and replace the globe in the anchor light, put up a new windex, and run another halyard. The light fixing involved Magnus solving a wiring mystery – which really required Sherlock Holmes like instincts!
• Resealed front hatch, this is the second attempt to fix a leak. Also tried to sika some parts of the cockpit.

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