Happy Christmas


Happy Christmas to all our blog readers
and best wishes for plain sailing into the new year

(query to self: what is plain sailing? Is it something we all want?)


Heat and dust


View of Badalona (three chimneys in the distance) from Parc Guell

At the weekend Sam and I left the boys behind for a flying visit to Barcelona. We left home at 4am on Saturday and I got back at 12.30am on Tuesday morning (i.e. the middle of the night) so it really was a very quick one.

Kalessin was absolutely fine, but incredibly dirty - the result of being surrounded by building sites. The first thing we did when we arrived was scrub her down (in fact, to be technical about this, I scrubbed her down while Sam got friendly with Luis and his girlfriend in the boat across the pontoon). By the time Sam left on Wednesday Kalessin was already filthy again. Progress on the building closest to us, supposedly a hotel, seems very slow - some brickwork has been added but otherwise it looked much as it did in September.

We had excellent weather for most of our stay - sun and blue skies - but you still get quite short days and it does get quite chilly at night. It was the first time for nearly two years I contemplated putting on the boat heating system - we didn't though, as it's gas powered, we only have one cylinder left with gas in it and haven't worked out where to get refills yet.

We didn't get to the boat until around 2pm on Saturday, by the time we had messed about with trains and found a supermarket to get some necessities. I was in the epic queue with my arms full of groceries (couldn't find a basket) when Sam phoned to see if I'd got lost. Getting out my phone and answering it was challenging, and I'd like to apologise to the supermarket now for all the Ferrero Rochers that went on the floor.

After washing the boat I got rather damp, very chilly and very tired, so made up the bed in the forepeak and retired with a hot water bottle. What heaven. I do like sleeping on board Kalessin. We both slept for a couple of hours and went out to find somewhere to eat around the marina - loads of choice, about six places ranging from v. posh to burger bar, but all totally empty. In the end we went for a tapas bar with a few people in it and had a pleasant meal, but even when we came out at 10.45pm - surely on a Saturday night this must be a peak eating-out time in Spain - the restaurants were still very far from full.


Sunday was a culture-packed day - the morning in MNAC, the art gallery of Catalunya, looking at medieval triptyches and Spanish Impressionists, and the afternoon in Parc Guell, for an unadulterated dose of Antonio Gaudi. We originally hoped at this point to visit my long-lost schoolfriend Alan Teed and his wife Joan, on board their yacht Moonstruck which is currently in the Real Club Maritim de Barcelona in Port Vell. Sadly they have returned to the States until after Christmas, so instead we went to Port Olimpico (pictured), thoroughly enjoyed wandering around and feeling glad our yacht wasn't there, and found a really good place to eat at El Cangrejo Loco (The Mad Crab) which is unusual in serving food from 1pm to 1am, so we were able to eat at the mad hour (for Spain) of 7pm, and got the tram (yes!) back to the boat by 9.30.

Reading Alan and Joan's site reminds me of one of the key advantages of Port Badalona which we hadn't really appreciated - the crime rate in central Barcelona is very high and thieves can and do get on to the pontoons - we've seen no sign of crime at all in Badalona (although maybe we've been lucky).

Monday was my last day and I insisted on getting to the cathedral, which we missed last time owing to its wacky habit of closing between 12.45 and 5.15pm. It was stunning, as was the roof - it costs €2.50 to ascend in a lift to walkways which wind through the crockets and flying buttresses. On to Santa Maria de Mar (another medieval church), lunch at a nice little restaurant called Cheese Me, and then the rest of the afternoon at the Museu Maritim, set in fantastic medieval boatbuilding sheds, before I headed out to the airport.

Oh yes, forgot to add - apparently RENFE (Spanish rail) have been accidentally killing people, so as a compensation all trips to the airport are free.

Sam spent Tuesday adding metal spring boinggers (pictured left - Ben would like to add that this is a stainless steel one but ours is not stainless, because we have been advised that these are stronger) to our mooring warps (the rubber one broke), changing the oil, sorting out the bilge pump and finding an enormous supermarket in Sant Adria de Besos. He came home on Wednesday.


Sam at Parc Guell

Gaudi lizard at Parc Guell (v famous)

Pictures on Facebook

I've managed to get the picture uploader working on Facebook (by reinstalling Java) and created an entire album of pictures of Kalessin - you can also get to it from the link to the right. It's a very quick way to upload and label pictures but a bit of a self-indulgence - I don't expect anyone but me would want to look at 60 pictures of one boat! Even better, next time I get a few minutes I'll upload volume 2.

To check locations I've been referring to Ben's log from last year (the ship's log is still on board). It's lovely to see his perspective. Sample entry from 9 August 2006: "In the evening my parents invited a couple from an English boat to come over for drinks. This was at about 6 o'clock. After a lot of drinks the couple finally left at ten o'clock, leaving me feeling rather hungry with two slightly drunk parents." That was Paul & Val from Intemperance - glad we started out as we meant to go on...

North Pennines

Wonderful walking in Allendale

We spent the half-term week not by EasyJetting down to Barcelona but by driving in the opposite direction, up the A1 to Northumberland, and spent a week in a lovely cottage in Allendale. The weather was really excellent with several days of brilliant sunshine, and I managed to fit in a decent moorland or riverside walk every day with the rest of the family doing about half of them. We also renewed acquaintance with my cousin Jeremy (and wife Edwina), who owns a large house and a grousemoor close to where we were staying, and the boys fished in his trout lake and burned heather on his moorland. In addition we met his two small daughters, my first cousins once removed. On Wednesday we went down to Durham to collect Guy's girlfriend Beth, renewed acquaintance with the cathedral which is one of the finest buildings in the world, and visited the Angel of the North. We even fitted in a trip to a leadmine at Killhope (and I walked home over the moors afterwards).

All in all an excellent holiday, and we kept in touch with the sea and boats through our reading - the excellent Narrow Dog to Carcassonne (the one about the narrowboat which crossed the English Channel with two pensioners and a whippet on board, and then headed down through the canals), and Paul Heiney's Last Man Across the Atlantic, which sounds like my kind of racing, to be honest (Sam found it a bit frustrating).

Coming back we glanced at the ybw.com discussion forums and were amazed to discover that an innocent post about doing laundry on board had become four pages of rants about whether people who worry about washing are fit to live aboard their boats at all. Oh dear. Possibly, having chosen to spend a week in English hills instead of in the Med, we are disqualified from posting to the Liveaboard Link for ever?

Jeremy & Ben with fine trout

Angel of the North (note tiny human at the foot for scale)

All five of us neatly arranged by height, with Hadrian's Wall at Sewingshields behind. Thanks to Guy, who worked out how to use the self-timer

Hello readers everywhere

In the past few days I've spoken to three or four people who all tell me they regularly read the blog. When I'm writing, the audience I have in mind is probably my parents (which may be why this blog is a bit different from many others out there). But it's lovely to know that other people look at it too - thank you!

I wish I could delight you all with pictures or descriptions of warm blue seas. Sadly not. It was 22deg in Barcelona yesterday but here in Suffolk it is cold, wet and rather windy.

I've been reading one of my acquisitions from the Southampton boat show, Nick Ward's Left for Dead. (Putting in the Amazon link shows me it already has an astonishing eight reviews). Nick was the last person to be rescued from the 1979 Fastnet disaster in which 15 people died. Only now has he felt able to write about it. He describes a Force 8 as a "bit of a headache" and a Force 10 as a "full-blown migraine". He's quite cool about 20ft waves but gets nervous when they increase from 35 to 40ft in the space of 15 minutes. Hmmm. I think I have forgotten what real sailing is like. I met Nick at the show and he told me he went straight back to sailing, and racing, as soon as he could - I guess it would either be that or never sailing again.

At some point next year we have to get Kalessin from Barcelona to Sete, where we can get into the canals. I need to work out if we can get away without a pilot book for Mediterranean France - it may only be a couple of stops, hardly worth a £35 investment. [Slightly later] I have just found the Waterways maps buried under a pile of post. Barcelona to Sete along the coast is about 150km, of which about half is in Spain. So maybe we can get away without. We met people sailing in Mallorca without a pilot book who seemed to get on fine...

Boat show special

At the weekend we went to the Southampton Boat Show with, rather surprisingly, both boys. It takes almost four hours to drive there which is a pain, but it really is a much better show than the London Boat Show, now at Excel.

Sam was in heaven, as he managed to have lengthy and technical conversations about diamond files (the sort that file through bottles), batteries and solar panels, bilge pumps and much more. I went to Kelvin Hughes and spent a fortune on books, including the Imray guide to the French Canals - does this mean we're really going? Ben visited his favourite, the modern Folkboat. Guy was feeling very grotty with a horrible cold but managed to buy a lighter which produces flames in three different colours.

Then we went down to take a look at Gipsy Moth IV, Francis Chichester's round-the-world boat, now heavily restored for the second time after hitting a reef somewhere in the Pacific. Ben was deeply impressed with their Lavac toilet (just like ours) although I think Chichester used the original Baby Blake. We opened a lid which looked like a fridge and found a locker entirely full of packets of Walker's crisps. If you're thinking of doing some corporate hospitality on board (which is the plan for next season) that's obviously what they feed you on!

The view from the end of the pontoon was magnificent. We were very lucky with the weather on Saturday which was warm and sunny with light winds, and you could look up and down Southampton Water and see two huge new cruise liners, the QE2, cargo and container ships, racing yachts with amazing Kevlar sails, patrols to make sure no-one from the boat show fell in the water, and even the Isle of Wight ferry. The pontoon was bobbing up and down so much you really felt that you were out there.

We were delighted to meet Chris, Sally and Maddy from Moondance, one of our constant companions from last year - I think we first met in La Coruña. While we pootled around Portugal and Spain they did an Atlantic crossing and spent the winter in the West Indies. Moondance is now back in the UK and in 2009 they will probably take her down through the canals to the Med - easy to do as she's a Southerly with lifting keel, and draws almost nothing with the keel up.

Then home, in almost total silence except for the constant clicking of boys' thumbs on the PlayStation controllers, and Guy sniffing every 15 second for four hours...

Pictures from Barcelona

Chillis in Barcelona's main market

Sam in Port Vell, Barcelona skyline behind

Stained glass in the Sagrada Familia

Cable car in Montserrat

Montserrat view

The extraordinary mercury fountain in the Miro museum

Guy makes friends with a sculpture

Guy & Ben make friends with a big gun


Barcelona and home

From Bonaire we had an astonishingly smooth and fairly quick 110-mile crossing to Barcelona - and we even managed to sail for about five hours out of the 20. After that the wind dropped as forecast and it was motoring all the way, but warm and clear with a marvellous full moon. Guy and Beth stood part of a night watch with Sam, and Ben did one with me - I sent him to bed about 4am when his yawns became continuous. The only downside was the dew, which dripped off the mainsail so hard I thought it was raining!

Sitting on the foredeck at sunset - the sea seemed to merge with the land


Marina Badalona was a bit of a disappointment when we got in at 7.30am. It's about four miles north of Barcelona, absolutely brand new with construction still going on. The neighbourhood used to be very industrial and still has a whopping great power station, but most of the warehouses are being replaced with enormous residential blocks. All in all a bit grim and very concretey. Sam phoned Port Vell, the central Barcelona marina, but they couldn't even do us a single night (and in case we were thinking of overwintering there have had a waiting list since April). Port Olimpico is said to be surrounded by discos and noisy at night, Port Forum is for superyachts and hadn't responded to any of our calls or emails, so we were stuck with Badalona.

As ever, a day's rest cheered us up a bit. The marina is secure and well protected (in fact you can't see the sea because of the enormous concrete walls - a bit like Brighton marina). There is an immense sandy beach five minutes' walk away, with lots of nudists and some gay people at our end to make it more interesting. (Nudists all seem to be over 60, or do they just look mature because of all that exposure to the sun?) It's about 10 minutes' walk to the Metro and then another 20 minutes or so to get into the city - and if you get bored with the Metro there are two RENFE rail stations and a tram terminus also each within 10 minutes' walk, and a bus which runs right through the marina. And we did eventually find a big supermarket close to the Metro station, which cheered me up - Guy thinks we're obsessed with supermarkets, but possibly he doesn't appreciate the challenge of carrying all food by arm from several miles away...

Anyway Barcelona is a great city. Sam knows it a bit, but this was my first visit since losing my luggage in Barcelona airport en route to Alicante when I was 16. We spent Wednesday in Las Ramblas and in the Barri Gotic, the old town with the cathedral and medieval buildings, then strolled down to see Port Vell (which does look very full) and the Parc Ciutadella. On the Thursday Sam, Ben and I did the proper tourist thing and went to see the Sagrada Familia - the world's most astonishing building site. I see they are now talking about completion in 2026 (by which time I will be 70!)

Sadly Sam had to head home on a late flight on the 30th to sort out some work, so I was alone with three teenagers. On Friday I succeeded in dragging them out of bed before 9am for a trip to Montserrat, on the recommendation of my friend Emma. Thanks Em, a brilliant choice - train journey, then cable car up to the astonishing monastery site 1000m above sea level. We had a picnic and a gentle walk, and some of the party queued to touch the feet of the Virgin before we headed home again. (OK, Guy and Beth joined the queue by mistake...)

Saturday was a rest and beach day (also a day for taking down and cleaning the foresail) and on Sunday we went to Montjuic, the hill to the south of the city, for a trip to the Joan Miro museum and the castle. Sadly the teenagers were more impressed by the cable car and the castle's military museum than the works of Miro, although I'm sure a bit of culture was very good for them. We spent the afternoon in one of Barcelona's extremely beautiful parks, and then the youngsters went straight home while I strolled up to the Olympic stadium and admired the Catalunya art gallery from the outside. With Kalessin likely to be in Barcelona for the winter I hope to spend a few days on a cultural visit to see all the museums I missed!

Monday was a day for packing up and cleaning the boat - it feels very strange to be leaving it for the winter when August is only just over. And on Tuesday easyJet whisked us back to Stansted where Sam met us. The good side of his going ahead is that he cleaned the house, shopped for food, and met us at the airport which has made the whole return very painless. The sun shone too, which I gather is unusual for the UK...

Bon aire, mauvais waves

After a moderately breezy night we headed over towards Bonaire this morning with the intention of anchoring for lunch in a cala (bay) en route. The wind was fine, around force 3-4 from the north or north-east, but the sea was full of quite big bumps - 1 to 1.5 metre waves. The crew retired below to lie down, but because of the spray as we crashed through the waves, all the hatches were shut and it was very airless below.

Naturally as the cala we had in mind is the only one sheltered from the north-east around here, and it's Sunday, it was totally full of anchored boats when we arrived. Anchoring further out would have meant being in 15m depth and in the swell, so we gave it a miss and came on to Bonaire. This is where we started and where Kalessin spent a month out of the water in July.

It is very hot here. We're still on the reception pontoon as Tony, the main man in Bonaire, is at lunch. Still at least there is a really good internet connection which was the main point of coming over here rather than setting off to Barcelona from Colonia de san Pedro. Plus we can have another meal at the Cocodrilo restaurant.

Every forecast I can get hold of says the wind will drop during the day and we should get a force three to four on the beam - perfect for our crossing tomorrow. I do hope so. I don't think the crew could cope with 24 hours of today's bumps.

Wind wind wind

After five nights in Porto Cristo we left on Thursday morning to head north again. In deference to Beth, who has never done any yacht sailing before, we departed about 8.30am when the sea was still flat and there was no wind at all. Just as well in fact, as after four hours or so she started to get a bit queasy. We managed some sailing with the wind almost aft, more motoring, and got back to Colonia de San Pedro for the third time, much to Ben’s disgust. (He thinks it’s boring).

The forecast was for gales on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, and sure enough about 12.30 on Friday lunchtime, after a morning of showers and thunder, the wind arrived. Not gales exactly but a fairly steady force 5-6, peaking with a 45-knot gust somewhere around 4am on Saturday. It’s from just south of east so we’re well sheltered here in the lee of the hills – Alcudia across the bay is much more exposed, and the south of Mallorca could be pretty horrible. The rain is full of orange dust from the Sahara which has left messy spots all over the boat.

The winds are modest by northern European standards – we’ve been remembering a day in a marina miles inland in the Dutch delta when we saw steady force 7 and a peak of 50 knots - but this is probably the strongest wind we’ve seen in a while.

It’s hard to tell, given the weather, but judging by Thursday which was hot and calm, there seem to be fewer tourists around than on our previous visit. We thought the peak might be the first two weeks in August and this could well be correct. If so, hooray. I’ve spent most of my life avoiding top holiday destinations at peak time for a jolly good reason – they’re loathsome.

Wet, wet, wet

Well, this is depressing. We collected Guy & Beth from Palma airport last night and they seem to have brought UK weather with them. As we drove into Porto Cristo it started raining. When we got back to the boat about 1am Ben was asleep with all the hatches open & our beds were wet. There was quite strong wind overnight. About 5.30am it started raining again, and at noon it’s still raining hard, with no sign of let-up. I had to put on my Musto waterproof jacket to go to the loo! Oh yes, and the internet connection isn’t working (possibly because everyone else in the marina is trying to access it…)

Sam has headed off to return the hire car, bless him, and fortunately all three youngsters slept until after 11am. On a different morning I might have woken them but today bed seems like a really good place to be.

I didn’t sleep much. There were loud Germans until about 4am, rocking boat, squeaky fenders, gusting wind, Sam snoring etc. Also I’d had to stay awake until 1am at the airport, and my go-to-sleep mechanism seemed to be switched off. Once it started raining hard I dozed off – I guess it brings back happy memories of wet boat holidays in the Norfolk Broads and the Netherlands.

Yesterday we made the most of having the car to do a big supermarket shop in Manacor, the nearest big town (and apparently Mallorca’s second largest). Then we went down to take a look at Porto Colom which was the alternative to coming in here. It’s a lovely setting, a lagoon rather like Fornells, only smaller, but as far as we could see there were no berths or moorings available, and a man on a British boat here in Porto Cristo was saying he had a very uncomfortable night anchored in there on Monday.

This chap is on a yacht which we think is flying the Ocean Cruising Club burgee, they spent last summer in Ibiza and this summer in Mallorca, and he doesn’t seem to have a pilot book for the Balearic Islands – he borrowed ours! Granted they cost an extortionate £35 and are sometimes wrong or out of date, but I wouldn’t want to be without one. We have several hundred pounds’ worth of pilot books for places we’ve been, now residing under the aft cabin bunk.

Talking of the aft cabin, Ben is very cross at being turned out of “his” cabin to make way for Guy and Beth. He has to sleep in the main cabin which means much less privacy. It’s hard to say anything to him except “sorry, it has to be this way”. The boat feels very full with five large people on it.

Porto Cristo

We’re in Porto Cristo, about halfway down the right-hand side of Mallorca. Rather surprisingly it’s grey, dull and drizzling, although still very warm. Ben has occasionally expressed a desire to be sailing back in the North Sea, and Sam suggested we take the canopy down and Ben could put on his waterproofs and go and sit in the rain to remind him of home. He declined.

I had a bad couple of hours when we left Colonia de San Pedro. I think I didn’t really see the point of going anywhere else, and the pilot book is full of dire warnings about how difficult it is to find space in any bays or ports down the east coast. In fact when we arrived about 2 o’clock on Saturday afternoon the visitors’ berths were almost all empty, so there was no problem at all. There are strong winds forecast for tomorrow though, so today it seems to be filling up a bit. I do hope when we next go out sailing I feel better, although we seem to be getting very mixed weather, and further strong winds for several days yet.

We've just been reading the log of Khepri, our friends from last year, who covered 1100 miles on their way back from the Azores, and here I am worrying about 30-mile passages...

This is a very sheltered bay – more of a gorge, in fact, as it’s very steep-sided - and the marina is round a right-angle bend, so although a bit of swell sometimes comes in there’s good protection. The main asset is the Club Nautico, which has a pleasant restaurant and bar, a huge rooftop swimming pool with a view over the town, magnificent showers, free wifi internet access and even a €3 washing machine. The berth isn't cheap, but about half the price of Sunseeker in Mahon!




Pictured: Camilla & Ben in rooftop pool. Porto Cristo is behind and top of
Kalessin's mast just visible to the left

The town is a bit tacky – most people only come here to visit the Caves of Drac, which we did this morning. The caves (pictured right - no flash allowed so these are a bit shaky) are fantastic, with a huge subterranean lake complete with musicians in boats covered in fairly-lights. However, there’s a very slick operation to feed as many tourists through as possible, and as Ben said it feels like much less of an adventure than the cold wet caves of the Yorkshire Dales. Otherwise the town features a pleasant, but small, beach and some touristy shops. Sam and I explored a bit further this morning when we went to find a car hire place 15 minutes’ walk inland, and it’s mostly very ordinary. I suspect that the workers of the huge resorts like Cala Millor, just up the coast, all live here. The rich people live in the nice villas between the gorge and the sea itself.

We’re hiring the car because Guy and his girlfriend Beth are due to join us tomorrow. A one-way taxi would cost them €60, and a day’s car hire costs €40 and means we can meet them when they get in around midnight, so a better deal all round. We might spend a bit of tomorrow afternoon exploring, and also going for a big shop at a cheaper supermarket inland.

I think this is as far south as we’ll go. We hoped to get to the nature reserve on the Islas Cabreras but a combination of Spanish bureaucracy (you have to request a permit by fax, then be in the same place for about three days, not including weekends, so they can fax a permit back to you) and unpromising weather, plus me being a total and utter wimp, decided us that we were better off here. Once Guy arrives we hope there’ll be a weather window for us to go back to northern Mallorca on Thursday, then hole up again when more strong wind comes through, and head for Barcelona in around a week’s time.

More pictures from Menorca

A typical inhabitant of the Sunseeker berth in Mahon, Menorca. Owners don't like mentioning fuel costs, but we heard about one who spent £7000 on diesel during one holidayKalessin anchored outside Mahon, viewed from the fort at La Mola. We were here for three nights. Looks busy, but this was mid-afternoon - there were twice as many overnight!


Boys and their toys - Sam & Ben fire the smaller Vickers from the fort at La Mola

Ciudadela - boats, boats everywhere and not a single visitors' mooring. You can't see the swell coming in but it was already starting at this point

Back to Mallorca – and marina heaven

17 August 2007

I have to admit it – I am a marina tart. I love the idea of a solitary anchorage with a golden beach and beautiful views (though you don’t get solitary here in August). I really do love being able to swim off the back of the boat and the fresher air that you get in mid-bay. But when it comes to lumps and bumps in the sea, or nasty bits of wind, I really, really like being tied up to a nice solid quay. And after a few days of anchorages and moorings I get rather tired of everything on the boat, including me, always being encrusted in salt, and never really dry, with not enough fresh water to wash anything down.

We went and explored Ciudadela (see below), which is pretty but more than somewhat touristy. Getting into town proved a bit of a challenge, as Ben rowed us up to the beach but were told we couldn’t land as the area was reserved for swimmers. So he rowed all the way back and up to the open end of the cala where there was a tiny landing place, just big enough to get the dinghy ashore. After our hot row and walk into town we were desperately thirsty, but the café we went into was really only interested in serving food – they took 10 minutes to take our order and another 10 minutes to bring drinks. Quite amazing in Spain at about 6.30pm, where the only people eating are Brits with small children!

Having walked around, seen the sights, and enjoyed a pleasant meal, we got back to the anchorage about 9.30pm to find a westerly swell coming in and Kalessin rolling through an angle of about 60 degrees – modest compared with the boats in the outer anchorage but still enough to ensure an extremely unpleasant and sleepless night. I spent most of it sitting on the cabin sole, the most stable part of the boat, and wishing I was almost anywhere else. I offered God a large donation to any Christian charity of his choice if he would take the swell away, but although it eventually reduced slightly for an hour or so (and I got a bit of sleep) it then came back, so perhaps He wasn’t listening. Or perhaps someone else needed the swell. Just to add insult to injury, for the first time we were invaded by mosquitoes and both Sam & I got bitten. Frankly I don’t mind if I never go to Ciudadela again.

At first light on Wednesday morning we dinghied and swam ashore, cast off the lines and set off out into the grey, lumpy sea. We’d picked up a forecast which wasn’t too good, wind up to force 5 on the nose, but in fact it was only a 3-4 and just far enough aft for us to sail pretty speedily – 6 knots-plus most of the way, in brilliant sunshine once the sun came up. Even better, as we approached Mallorca the sea flattened out more and more, and we had a couple of hours of really good sailing before the wind died away.

So now we’re back in Colonia de Sant Pedro which was our previous jumping-off point from Mallorca. We came here because they seemed to have more room than most of the other marinas and we thought we had a good chance of finding a place, which was correct. At 11am exactly yesterday morning the wind started blowing steadily from the north-east at around a force 5-6 and it hasn’t stopped since, so we suspect this of being a tramontana, the notorious northerly wind cause by a depression in the Golfe du Lion. (The wind indicator says 12-15 knots which is a force 4, but we strongly suspect it of under-reading because (a) on Wednesday we were sailing at 6.8 knots in an indicated 8 knots of wind which is improbable, (b) there is a great big swell and lots of white horses, which seems like more than a force 4, and (c) not a single boat seems to be moving in the whole of Alcudia bay).

Despite the spectacular swell outside the harbour we are in here and it’s safe and pleasant, we are clean and showered and we have washed our clothes (although the spray coming over the harbour wall makes them a bit salty again), we have mains electricity and the fridge running and gallons of fresh water in the tanks, there is a spectacular view of mountains with some nice walks along the coastline, pleasant bars and restaurants, and a Spar supermarket within five minutes’ walk, and altogether it’s pretty close to heaven.

I haven’t put this to Sam yet but wonder if we could just stay here until Guy arrives on the 21st… On the other hand we have applied for a permit to visit the Islas Cabreras nature reserve to the south of Mallorca on Monday so perhaps we ought to make a bit of an effort to get down there.

For the record, the tally so far is:
  • 1 night ashore (before the launch)
  • 9 nights in marinas or quayside
  • 12 nights on moorings or anchored
Some days the sea looks like this (approaching Mallorca as the wind dies):

...and then there are days when you're glad to be in a marina (Tramontana off Colonia de San Pedro):


14 August 2007

We’re anchored in a little cala on the edge of Ciudadela – this one is a long narrow inlet where we have an anchor out at the front and two lines ashore. The shore lines were a slick combination of me swimming ashore and Ben in the dinghy, though casting them off might be fun. Ben got me to look at the anchor with a mask for reassurance – it’s buried so deep you can only just see it. The water is very clear and full of little fishes.

The downside (there’s always one) is the Spanish charter boat anchored next to us with music on full blast. Sam and Ben don’t mind too much as the yacht is well draped with almost completely naked Spanish teenagers. Hopefully later this afternoon we’ll get to see Ciudadela, which we missed last time and is lovely, according to the guidebooks.

We spent three more nights on a mooring in Fornells and apart from the bumpy periods in the early afternoon and early evening when all the boats came and went, it was a lovely spot. We had lots of interesting cloud and then quite a lot of rain one night – it’s disconcerting getting clouds here because Mediterranean weather patterns are so different from home – you never know what they mean.

Back to Fornells

We’re back in Fornells today after three nights at anchor in the Cala Taulera on the edge of Mahon. The wind has gone around to the south-west, not ideal for a sail back to Mallorca, and it’s the weekend, so we’ve taken the easy option and come back here. At the moment it’s quite windy and also quite choppy but usually the wind starts to drop by around 8pm so we’re hoping for a less splashy dinghy ride to the town – it will be the first time we have eaten out since we came here last time, 10 days ago.

Three days at anchor is a record for us and fortunately last night was quite calm so I got a bit of sleep. Sam didn’t though – he said he kept waiting for me to wake up! There was a huge concert up at the fort but fortunately it was really barely audible and the only disturbance was the police arriving at 5am. The anchorage was jam-packed, with boats continuing to arrive after dark.

We spent a bit of time chatting to Tony, who is anchored waiting for friends to arrive. His 49-footer has 11 berths but he says only two of them are usable – the rest are full of “stuff”. He used to have a Moody 33 and says he was much more disciplined in those days. You do wonder about people’s lives – he’s divorced, has various possessions and motorbikes in storage and used to have an apartment in Spain somewhere but doesn’t any more. If you ask him a question he gives you so much detail there’s not time to follow up with questions like “why are you sailing around the Balearics single-handed in a superfast racing 49-footer?”



9 August 2007

We’ve just been to visit the vast fortress on the Ila de la Mola, next to our anchorage. For the second day running it has been grey and cloudy, but unlike yesterday when it was very windy, today is close and still with spots of rain. Unfortunately we haven’t picked up a forecast for this area on the Navtex, although I am getting dire warnings for the area north of Corsica where there is a deep depression and Force 8s. I think we’ll stay here tonight but it would be good to know what to expect tomorrow. Personally I’d like to rush back to Mallorca and tie up in a nice, solid, safe, expensive marina. I can’t believe I can be such a wimp.

The fortress is extraordinary – built in the mid 19th century at a time when artillery was developing rapidly, it was out of date as soon as it was completed and has never seen serious action. It also houses some enormous Vickers cannons from 1931 which could probably be put out of action by any WW2 bomber, as they could hit a ship 35km away but couldn’t be pointed up at the sky. Hard to tell if the fort was an enormous waste of money or an effective deterrent – a bit like most other military activities then.

The visit was a good way to spend a few hours and reminded us that last year we made a big effort to do educational things, especially for Ben’s benefit, and we need to do more of the same this year. It does make the whole trip seem much more worthwhile. We’ve been lucky in that this has probably been our coolest day so far – only 25 deg. We couldn’t have contemplated it in 32 deg and blazing sunshine.



8 August 2007

Following our two expensive nights in the middle of Mahon we’ve now moved back to the anchorage near the entrance to the harbour. It’s forecast to be quite windy until tomorrow morning and we’re lying to two anchors. In spite of the fact that we’ve hardly moved since we set them I twitch every time there is a gust or a creaking noise and am unable to relax at all. I think I need treatment. Mind you, it did take us three goes to set the first anchor.

Unsurprisingly given the forecast it’s very busy in here. Sam has just counted 30 yachts, and nationalities we have spotted so far include Spanish, French, Italian, British, German, Danish, Swedish, Belgian, Austrian, New Zealand and South African. Quite a few of the boats were here when we came in a few days ago – not sure of the appeal as it’s at least two miles to the town by dinghy, but there you go.

In spite of the cost of the Sunseeker berth it probably was worth it. (I notice the price halves in June and September and goes down to about a fifth the rest of the year). If we’d been stuck in this anchorage we probably wouldn’t have seen Mahon at all. Every evening we were there we saw desperate boats cruising up and down looking for a space, and the port authorities really weren’t interested. We got to hobnob with the millionaires in a top spot. Sam got chatting to the British family next to us, who have a permanent mooring there, and reckoned their relatively modest 45ft motorboat was worth about £800,000. He was too embarrassed to tell us how much it costs him to fill up with fuel.

The biggest sailing and motor yachts have to anchor off or go to the cruise-liner berth, but there are loads of massively ostentatious boats along the harbour front. Many have uniformed staff, and I don’t think they have to trot up to Spar for their groceries. It must be a strange life.

Pictures, Mallorca & Menorca

Launch in Bonaire

Mooring in Fornells, Menorca

Porto Addaya, Menorca

Quayside, Mahon

Meat pies in Mahon



Why we love Sunseeker, and other tales

We’ve spent last night in the most expensive berth in the world, probably – the Sunseeker pontoon in Mahon, capital of Menorca. It’s costing us €79 a night which is four times as much as we were paying in Galicia this time last year, for traffic noise, dirt, passing ships and minimal facilities. And the good thing is, we’re really pleased to be here.

Mahon was due to be our next step after Port Addaya and after our various technical issues the good news was that it has the best yacht spares in Menorca. So we set off on our first hazy morning heading into a light south-easterly. The entrance to Mahon, which is one of the great ports of the Med, is spectacular and full of fortifications built by the British when they ran the place in the late eighteenth century. We were hopeful of finding a berth and arrived at the visitors’ pontoon about 2pm to be told by an unhelpful marinero that there was no space in the entire port – all “complete”, despite many visible spaces.

We headed back down to the rather bleak visitors’ anchorage, about 1.5 miles out of town, while Sam tried various options by phone and VHF, including the port authorities, Sunseeker who maintain a base here, and the Marina Menorca who didn’t answer their phone, without success. We anchored – naturally it took three goes to get it right – and wandered what to do next. After a while, the phone rang. It was the man from Sunseeker (he’s called Ash – buy a boat from him if you happen to be passing), whom Sam had called earlier, saying that a berth had opened up if we wanted it. Imagine – he took the trouble to find our number and call us back when he could just have given a berth to the next caller. So here were are.

Mahon is a really nice, amazingly Spanish town. We managed to find a pump servicing kit for the Lavac from Pedro’s Boat supplies, bought some local gin from the distiller where you just help yourself to samples, and went to the big Spar supermarket underneath the church cloisters which have become Mahon’s market. It is however stonkingly hot, and we were forced to stop several times for cool drinks. When we got back to the yacht we were exceedingly hot and dusty, and the Sunseeker showers don’t open until tomorrow. Also, were are a tourist attraction – the trouble with being right on the promenade at the front of the town. Maybe tomorrow we’ll save our €79 and go to an anchorage.


5 August 2007


We spent a couple of nights in Porto Addaya, only about 10 miles east of Fornells – one in the marina, which we thought was expensive at the time, and one anchored in the cala. It’s a very pretty and very sheltered bay, and the marina people are very helpful, but the town itself consists almost entirely of new, albeit tasteful, residential development around two long inlets, which is a bit depressing – just one bar, and one small commercial centre with supermarket and restaurant, all very English. (No local butter in the supermarket - only Kerrygold and Country Life, although Menorca is a big dairy producer). The cala (bay) is a better place to be, apart from my usual nervousness about anchoring.

The day getting from Fornells to Addaya was a bad one. When we set off, we thought all systems on the boat were working OK. We filled up with water at the port in Fornells. Shortly afterwards we discovered the bilges were full of fresh water, then we discovered that the manual bilge pump wasn’t working (although the electric one was fine) and that the pressurised water system wasn’t working at all (fortunately we have a fallback system with a footpump from the front tank, but it is nice to be able to turn on a tap to get water). The diesel gauge was registering a quarter full instead of almost full. And finally we discovered that our dear friend the Lavac (loo) wasn’t emptying properly.

Eventually we discovered that a tiny pipe under the sink had come adrift and had probably pumped quite a lot of the Fornells water straight into the bilge. The Lavac problem seems to relate to various seals which have given up the ghost. And the diesel gauge was disconnected at the back. The bilge pump seems to have died, though.


3 August 2007

Today has been a very nothing day so far. We’re still in Fornells and sitting out a forecast northerly force 5-6 – here at the bottom end of the inlet we’ve seen a maximum of around 21 knots which is at the top of a force 5. Going ashore in the dinghy would mean getting very wet, so we’ve just been on board doing the things you always do on a boat in bad weather. The really odd thing is doing them when it’s 28 degrees C – playing Scrabble etc should really be done when it’s cold or raining.

Yesterday we went over to the little settlement closest to where we are, where there’s a sailing school (or possibly two) and a posh restaurant. We had a pleasant lunch in a little hostal which seems to be entirely occupied by dinghy-sailing English people. No showers at the sailing club but that was probably just as well, since we got soaked again on the way back to the yacht.

In the evening we had planned a beach barbecue but with the wind already starting to get up that didn’t look like a very good idea. So for the first time we used our new Cobb barbecue on board. On the whole it was pretty successful, although Spanish barbecue meat leaves something to be desired. We also discovered that if you put on the lid straight after lighting the barbecue the whole thing goes out instantly and you have to start again. We celebrated our successful meal by having a rather chilly solar shower in the gathering darkness and increasing wind – the coldest I’ve been since we arrived! At least my hair is a bit less salty.

This is the longest time since we left England that we have been off shore power and haven’t had the engine running either. The solar panels do what they can but we have had to turn off the fridge which was draining its battery comprehensively (it has a dedicated battery). We ran the engine for an hour this morning but even that wasn’t really enough to chill the fridge down. However now that we’ve eaten the meat other things in the fridge will probably survive fine at higher temperatures… warm beer isn’t so good, though.

Planning is proving challenging. We have to collect Guy and Beth from Palma Airport on the 21st so it makes sense to be somewhere within easy reach, but the marinas closest to the airport look pretty grim, or likely to be full, or both. Also the western side of Mallorca only has one port, Soller, while the eastern side is full of sheltered inlets. So we might not do a lap of Mallorca but instead stick to the eastern side, just heading south to collect the youngsters, retracing our steps, and then perhaps leaving from Bonaire to go to Barcelona. We’ll see.


1 August 07

Yesterday we sailed from Mallorca to Menorca. We aimed to go to Ciudadella, a very attractive small town which seems to have abandoned interest in visiting yachtsmen as its visitors’ quay was closed. We anchored in an extremely pretty little south-facing W-shaped bay on the edge of town, which was so small and full that we had to take a line ashore. I swam to the rocks, climbed up them with the rope in my teeth and tied it to a tree. Unfortunately during the evening the wind came around to the south and the bay was filled with the sound of sloshing waves all night. The anchor held fine but as ever at anchor I got very jittery and didn’t get to sleep until around 1.30am when the wind dropped a bit.

This morning, with continuing southerly winds forecast (fortunately we picked up a rather broken French forecast on the Navtex – I find the radio forecasts in Spanish a bit hard to follow), we abandoned plans to sail around the south of the island and instead headed around the north – Menorca is only 26 miles long. Good choice as we had an excellent sail most of the way in a relatively calm sea. We rounded Menorca’s most northerly cape and hit an unpleasant patch of south-easterly gusting up to about 18 knots – on the nose at that point - and bumpy, confused seas.

Fornells, where we are now, has a lovely inland sea stretching back from a narrow entrance. It was still quite windy when we arrived but we headed right down to the south of the inlet where it’s more sheltered. The pilot book says the weakness of Fornells is that the bottom is so churned up by anchoring that the holding is not very good. Fortunately there are dozens of what seem to be visitors’ moorings and we’re on one now. It’s not spectacularly beautiful (unlike Mallorca) but very pleasant and peaceful. There are loads of sailing schools so if watching people capsize turns you on there’s always plenty to see!

This evening we took the dinghy up to the supermarket in the village for stores – just under a mile. Getting there was fine, but on the way back we were heavily laden with bags and heading into the wind and we got amazingly wet. What a good thing that the water is nearly 30 deg C. The groceries survived pretty well too, although we were forced to eat the fresh bread straight away.

I'm hot

Well, as predicted, it is hot in Mallorca. Yesterday afternoon I was sitting on my bunk with sweat from the back of my head going drip…drip…drip on to my shoulder. It peaked at 32 deg. We did get the boat launched in the morning, and I spent the afternoon reading Harry Potter and shouting at anyone who interrupted me. Today is slightly cooler (30 deg) and also breezier, and perhaps we’re adapting a bit.

Bonaire is a very pleasant spot, with lots of pine trees, a couple of little rocky coves, a small supermarket, and various cafes and restaurants. Ben and I have swum a few times, in fact living in the sea seems quite attractive, although yesterday afternoon it got pretty choppy in the cove around the corner. I expect my fingers would go wrinkly after a while.

There is a brand new wifi network here, only connected today, with no security as yet – hence the post. It’s also given me a chance to check the forecast. We might change our plans as there looks like a week of steady north-easterlies, which would be on the nose for going to Menorca. Still the forecast could change, and we’re not expecting to leave until Monday. The biggest problem with being here in July and August is that there are 36,000 yachts in the Balearics but only 30,000 moorings, and a ban on any further marina development. We plan to anchor a lot (not always my favourite thing as regular readers will know) but the E coast of Mallorca is not going to be very sheltered in strong easterlies.

Just at the moment the sea breeze is howling alarmingly in the rigging of the boat next to us and I feel like staying here for the next three weeks. Top spot so far is the café around the corner with enormous padded basket chairs, hammocks and daybeds with awnings, all in the shade of the pine trees. It’s very sybaritic.

Sunshine and bottom scraping

On Monday night I phoned Sam in Mallorca. It was about 7.30pm in the UK, dark, very windy, cold and of course bucketing with rain. He told me he was sitting outside and still sweating at 8.30pm Spanish time. Too hot for me, but it has to be better than the UK. He has been cleaning, antifouling and replacing underwater things like anodes, while Kalessin is out of the water.

Ben and I are on a late flight to Palma tomorrow - we don't land until almost midnight and probably won't get on board until about 2am. Then at about 8am we will have to be up and about as Kalessin is being re-launched. The launch was originally promised for the 26th but it seems the boatyard staff "discovered" it was a festival day... well it is Spain, after all.

Guy returned from the Eastern Haze festival at the weekend absolutely coated in mud - he forgot his wellies. I am worrying in a maternal sort of way about who will scrub his jeans while we are away. I don't think his girlfriend's mother should have to do it. He has a driving theory test booked on 14 August - will he remember if I don't remind him? Will he even remember about getting to Stansted to fly out and join us onthe 21st? Worry, worry...

It's very quiet here

It's very, very quiet in our house today.

Guy is at a festival in Needham Market all weekend.

This morning a rather harassed-looking post lady arrived with a package from Amazon... and Ben has disappeared into the world of Hogwarts and Voldemort until further notice.

Sam and I had a rather complicated afternoon. He's flying out to Palma, Mallorca, this evening and thought it would be good to try the route we have recommended for Guy - train from Diss to Colchester and bus from Colchester station to Stansted. Arrived at Diss station to find loads of people milling around, no trains visible and the train due at 1317 running "27 minutes late". There are no trains at all from Diss to Norwich because of engineering works.

Never mind, I said brightly. I'll drive you to Colchester. What time is your bus? 1420, he says. I am equipped for a 10 minute drive to the station, i.e. gardening clothes, glasses not contact lenses, no cash, no charge in phone.

We drove very slowly to Colchester in holiday traffic, and as we turned off the A12, there was a vast traffic jam both on the A12 and into Colchester. Crawled incredibly slowly to the station. Got there about 1427. People at bus stop said Stansted bus had not arrived yet. Walked up and down nervously.

At around 1445 Sam admitted that actually he had misread the timetable and the bus should leave the train station at 1445. At 1455 it turned up, hooray!

I drove back home and headed into Diss to go to the charity shop in town with the best book selection, to stock up for our trip. As I got there they were locking up - half an hour early because the manager is away. I got a pitiful few books elsewhere and as I walked back to the car the heavens opened and I got soaked.

When I got home I checked the timetables. The train was due to leave Diss at 1327, not 27 minutes late as Sam thought. It should have reached Colchester at 1411, absolutely masses of time to catch the bus. Memo to self: next time, check timetable first & do not rely on husband. Also checked details which he has typed out for Guy. Train and bus times are all absolutely correct. Memo to self: do not rely on husband's memory when he is stressed...

Ben and I fly out on Thursday. We will drive to my parents' house in Essex, leave the car there and get a lift to Stansted. I have now worked out a detailed timetable for the whole thing.

In Bonaire

Kalessin has reached Bonaire in northern Mallorca and the Intemperances returned to the UK on the 20th.

Sam says he has cleaned a huge amount of salt and grime off the boat... what with all that hard charging from Cartegena onwards there doesn't seem to have been much time for cleaning up.

The yacht comes out of the water in a couple of days and Sam returns to the UK on Wednesday, hooray! He says Bonaire is lovely, but hot. Looking forward to roasting there for a few days when Ben & I go out in July...

Bally arics

Today Kalessin is on her way from Ibiza to Majorca. According to Windguru there are light south-westerlies, temperatures of around 24 degrees, and cloud. So maybe they'll get a good spinnaker run - Sam seems to have developed new confidence with the spinnaker, not to mention new methods. That's what comes of sailing with experienced racers like Paul & Val.

Val seems to be recovering slowly from her bout of tummy trouble, and that combined with some adverse winds lost them some time, so they have only spent a couple of days in Ibiza. Guy and Ben are convinced Ibiza is wall-to-wall clubs, with sparkling lights and waist-deep foam absolutely everywhere. Sam says they haven't encountered any of that, but they were in the same marina as the Roamers last night so may well have encountered a bit of alcohol.

Kalessin spent a couple of days in Altea, last stop on the mainland, which has free high-quality wireless internet access. So Sam and I were able to use Yahoo chat a couple of times, which was nice. (Guy says only wrinklies use Yahoo chat whereas hip young persons like himself are all on MSN Messenger). Having spent the last couple of weeks researching and using Lotus Sametime at work - Norwich Union is mostly running software which is about 10 years out of date - I'm starting to learn more than I ever wanted to know about instant messaging systems.

The Intemperances fly home on the 20th so there's only a couple more days to get to Bonaire, where Kalessin will be hauled out for maintenance & antifouling. Sam had a good swim under the boat a couple of days ago and says that both antifouling and anodes are still in good shape, which is reassuring. The antifouling was particularly expensive but was obviously a good investment.

On Monday it will be exactly a year since we left Suffolk Yacht Harbour at 6am. What an amazing year it has been...

Portinatx, Ibiza, from Google Earth

Making progress

Sam and crew have made excellent progress along the Spanish coast, after a day or two exploring Morocco. As of the last few days they have been in Almerimar (pictured), which has a reputation as an excellent cruising marina - not least because it's a bit more affordable and slightly less full than many of the other marinas.


Poor Val has been stricken with Spanish tummy so they have spent a few days resting and waiting for the wind not to be force 6 on the nose! Fortunately they are parked next to a yacht whose owner used to own the other Westerly Storm on our pontoon in Suffolk Yacht Harbour ... what a small world sailing is. They have been explaining to Sam the delights of the French canals and I think he's slowly coming around to the idea, although unless we can get Kalessin well inland this autumn it may mean a very late start next year.

Occasional calls, emails and texts fly back and forth with crucial questions like "Do we have a grater on board?" (yes, it's on top of battery 4 under the sink) and "How do I change the blade on the jigsaw?" (use the long black screwdriver which is in a pot by the answerphone). I'm sure it's very good for Sam to be domestic and for me to do the DIY...

Straits of Gibraltar

Today, Kalessin is crossing from Gibraltar to Ceuta in Morocco. The forecast is good (moderate westerlies, temperatures up to 19 degrees) and I really want to visit Morocco. Trouble is, I'm back home in Suffolk while Sam, Paul and Val gallivant out in the straits.

I took Sam to Luton Airport on Tuesday where we met up with Paul and Val. Paul celebrated his last night in the West Indies by being beaten up, apparently by a local Tortolan loonie. Then, having done all they could to get Intemperance on her way to the UK by ship, Paul & Val took four flights back to the UK. By the time they arrived Paul's black eye was coming on very nicely and he had to be plastered with makeup for the photos for his new passport. On Tuesday Paul was doing the filmstar bit in Luton Airport, with dark glasses to cover up his spectacular bruising and red eyeball. However, Sam tells me that sunshine and Spanish brandy are having a curative effect and he now looks much better.

Sam's laptop wifi stopped working just before he left, which is a bit of a blow. So I guess that unless he (or Paul) mends it AND gets a good connection AND remembers how to log on to update the blog, any further blog updates will have to be done by me from Suffolk. I'll try not to sigh too loudly!

Plans, plans

Here's the good news: Easyjet is having a bad summer. So where it cost over £100 each way for us to fly out to the Algarve and back from Malaga at Easter, we're now looking at flights costing only around £50 each even in July and some of August.

And here's the summer plan so far: The boat will be ashore in Bonaire, northern Mallorca, from mid-June onwards. Sam flies out again in mid-July, Ben and I join him on 27 July and we spend three weeks pootling around Menorca and Mallorca. Then Guy and his girlfriend Beth fly out to Mallorca around 21 August, we pootle a bit more, and cross to Barcelona. Ben, Guy, Beth and I fly home at the beginning of September.

With us so far?

Then someone else (as yet unspecified, but hopefully a friend who is both a sailor & retired) joins Sam in Barcelona and they take Kalessin up into southern France, get the mast down, and park it for the winter somewhere up the canals...

...unless we change our minds again.

It's raining a lot here. Sam is worrying about whether we really want to go back to sailing in the UK.

What's in a name?

I was reading a thread at ybw.com on how people go about naming a yacht, and I thought we should have something on the blog about how we named Kalessin.

When we bought her she was named Box Bee. The first owner was a pilot and when he filled in his expenses he had to tick box B in order to claim exemption from...something (can't remember what). Over the years he made enough money to buy a boat, and hence the name. Funny and original, but not our story, so we looked around for another idea.

Rewind a bit. Our Sadler 29 was called Magewind, which is the name of a magical wind in the Earthsea books of Ursula le Guin - favourites of mine for many years. The name was given to the Sadler by her previous owner, Rod Usher, who before Magewind had owned another boat with an Earthsea-derived name, Lookfar. After Rod sold us Magewind he bought a Nauticat 33 and called it Tenar.

Anyway I got out my well-thumbed Earthsea trilogy and started reading out every possible name. None of them was quite right - until we got to Kalessin. This seemed to be a name that was fairly easy to spell and pronounce, a key advantage for a yacht name. Kalessin is the eldest dragon, incredibly wise, capable of long flights and on one occasion carrying two protagonists home from the land of death.

"Its head, the colour of iron, stained as with red rust at nostril and eye socket and jowl, hung facing him, almost over him. … It did not move. It might have been crouching there for hours, or for years, or for centuries. It was carven of iron, shaped from rock -- but the eyes, the eyes he dared not look into, the eyes like oil coiling on water, like yellow smoke behind glass, the opaque profound, and yellow eyes watched Arren."
The Farthest Shore, Ursula K le Guin

There is one other yacht called Kalessin that we know of, and it seems she is UK "Part 1" registered, as is our yacht. Because yachts on the Part 1 registry have to have a unique name, we ended up with Kalessin of Orwell.

The drawing is by Sergio M. Banchero, but since I found it on a Rumanian website using Cyrillic characters, I can't tell you any more.

The name is best known for a Norwegian "black metal band" (it says here) called Keep of Kalessin. You can listen to their music on their website but I really wouldn't recommend it. They must get very sore throats.

We toyed for a long time with the idea of a dragon decal on the side of the yacht but in the end felt we didn't need it. I'm not sure if Kalessin of Orwell is still a dragon to us, but it still seems like the right name.

Of course, it's said to be bad luck to rename a boat. Fortunately for us we used Vigor's Interdenominational Boat De-Naming Ceremony, and we hope that we have pacified any interested gods.

I do not care what comes after;
I have seen the dragons on the winds of morning...

- Ursula K. LeGuin (A Wizard of Earthsea)


Easter cruise pictures

Some of the best. We mislaid the camera as we came down the Straits, so the first pictures of Gibraltar are still on Sam's phone...

Farewell to Lagos

Hmmm, can I remember how to do this?


Town square, Vila Real de Santo Antonio

Extraordinary graffiti in Chipiona

Effigy of the Virgin Mary being carried to Cadiz Cathedral

Cadiz by night

Osborne bodega in El Puerto - your sherry is probably bottled here

An ape in Gibraltar


Three more apes at the top of the rock...

Into the Med, with Ben helming at 7.5 knots (and Gibraltar behind)

Merry Christmas from just me

Video of photos made for Sam's funeral    Dear friends and family As I hope you all know, this year has been a difficult one for me. On ...