Gibraltar – 23 February 2009

AC on the hard in Sotogrande

Edmond & Graham

Julia & Richard birthday Hosts

Margaret, Julia & Fiona at my Birthday Dinner

Peter and Mary


Roy and Margaret

Lois with Sir Ted Dexter

Not sure quite where to start with writing about the last 3 weeks since we arrived in Sotogrande to have AC lifted out but here goes…..

AC was eventually lifted out of the water on Friday 6^th of February after waiting 3 days for the travel lift to be fixed. We were to stay with John and Sandra Fitzpatrick but had guests

arriving early so Roy and Margaret very kindly offered to have us stay with them. You will recall we had only met them earlier in the week so what an amazing gesture to invite us to stay in their home. Even so we had know them only a short time it felt like we had know them for years – I believe they felt the same!! Not only did they have us to stay Roy dropped us off every morning at the yard and picked us up every night.

We worked quite hard on AC over the next 6 days – me on anti fouling and Terry sorting out the fixing of the propeller which turned out to be a worn bearing as well as a loose propeller which explained the knocking noise. Fortunately no damage had been done. We did have the Sunday off when Roy and Margaret decided to invite a few other friends around to their home for a Sunday roast which lingered into the evening – excellent!

During the course of that week it was also my birthday on the 10^th. Friends of Margaret’s and Roy’s, Richard and Julia, organised a wonderful dinner at their home with a few others – in fact 14 people in all! What a wonderful evening and once again we couldn’t have been made more welcome.

Earlier in the week we met a gentleman staying with John and Sandra by the name of Ted Dexter the famous English cricketer. He lives in Nice with his wife. We enjoyed hearing the story of him piloting his own aircraft (Piper Aztec) and flying out to Australia with his family many years ago!! He was such a character - we enjoyed his company at various times, including my birthday dinner, during the course of the week!

Of course we are grateful to both John and Sandra for introducing us to all these lovely people

since arriving in Sotogrande. Our social programme was equally hectic as our working days – no wonder we were tired when we arrived in Gibraltar. We can’t thank them enough for their hospitality, particularly Roy and Margaret who made us feel very welcome in their home – we so enjoyed their wonderful company and looking forward to seeing them in NZ next February!!

AC went back into water on the 12^th and we made our way to Gibraltar with a few of our new ‘best’ friends on board who came along for the ride – it was a really nice warm sunny day as well.

We caught up with Mike and Nicky in Gibraltar who we met in Samos whilst they were cruising on their boat. We spent quite a few fabulous nights with them in Samos so it was great to be able to met up with them again. Nicky has a business here in Gibraltar but they have a house in Spain. We went to their apartment here in Gibraltar for dinner last Wednesday and Nicky cooked us a delicious meal. We are encouraging them both to come and cruise in NZ!!!

Graham Waring our friend from Essex arrived on Tuesday for two days with his friend, Edmond,

whom we met with Graham when he visited us in Malta last March. It was a whirlwind two days but great to see them both.

Then on Saturday Mary and Peter Reeve our Foulness Island friends arrived and left us today! Again it was wonderful to spend our final two days with them to say goodbye. We are sorry we couldn’t say goodbye to Barbara fondly known as Bubs (Mary’s mother) who kindly agreed to adopt us during our many visits to their home on Foulness Island in Essex. We had had a very enjoyable lunch yesterday on the waterfront here in the Marina with Roy and Margaret also! Wonderful to think our friends would fly all this way to catch up with us before we leave the northern hemisphere – or it is just to make sure we do in fact leave – just kidding!!!!

So we are finally leaving Europe tomorrow on our way to Canaries and then across the Atlantic! It has been a full on 3 weeks in every which way – we have a newly anti fouled boat, a much improved effective propeller (now able to motor much faster) an excellent birthday celebration for me and most importantly a few more wonderful friends that we are encouraging to come to NZ after we get home – a pretty good outcome we thought!

We are cancelling our UK mobile number as at the 15^th of March, therefore we will not have phone from hereon in, however we will endeavour to pick up our email when we can.

Murray Aldridge will be updating the blog as we progress to the Canaries and across the Atlantic.

Until next time,

Love The Jolly Rogers

Sotogrande, Spain – 05 February 2009

For those of you who have been following our travels west across the Mediterranean will be pleased to know we have finally arrived in Sotogrande on Monday afternoon (2^nd of Feb). We are now 16 miles north of Gibraltar and can easily identify the ‘Rock’ from this distance. It is a wonderful sight to us!

We had an eventful 28 hours journey from Almerimar, during which, we pretty much had every weather condition possible – well I guess not a storm at least! We started our journey with light winds from the South East and were able to sail which continued to early evening. At that point the wind direction changed to the south west and picked up momentum as the hours ticked along. Then we encountered numerous squalls complete with thunder and lighting – quite a display and finally the last squall which was quite violent changed the wind direction to west 25 – 30 knots! Except for the SSE winds none of this weather was forecast!

At this point we were about 20 miles from the Malaga coastline. We plodded our way towards the coast endeavouring to get some shelter, which we did some hours later, when we continued motoring down the coast line to Sotogrande. It was rather a long long tiring night for both of us - so we were delighted to reach our destination.

We have been communicating with the yard since we were in Sardinia regarding the lifting out of AC to sort the problem of the knocking sound near the shaft. However we found out when we arrived that the lift is not working. We are waiting to hear when it is and then we can get on to solving our issue and push on to Gibraltar.

The upside of being here is that we met a couple in San Diego, John and Sandra Fitzpatrick (John was a famous sports car racing person in the 70’s and 80’s) in 2006 and we caught up with them on our way through to the Med in September 2007. Fortunately for us John has been most helpful in sourcing information in advance for us and they have very kindly offered to have us to stay with them while AC is on the hard! Gosh it makes all the difference when you have a local person to look out for you!!

On Tuesday John picked up and took us to a friend’s of his home – Roy and Margaret Oswell - where we had a lovely dinner – it was such a great evening! We are being well looked after which is fabulous!

Sotogrande is a resort complex with apartments, shops and restaurants around the water. It is very attractive, even in winter, and a very nice environment to be in! However the only downside is the cost to stay here – a little on the high side!!!

At this point we have been told that we will be lifted out tomorrow morning. It looks like we will be here until next week until probably Tuesday or Wednesday!!

At least we have just about finished Leg 2 across the Med – hooray!!!

Love

The Jolly Rogers