Bonjour Morroco

It's 8:00am and the only sound is the gentle lapping of the water against the hull. The sun is pouring in through the window above sending shards of dancing colours around the room and it's warm - no-need-for-duvet-just-a-sheet warm. Suddenly the peace is broken by a 20 meter metal tower blasting our morning prayer on the megaohone attached to its top. If you peer out however you will not see any change in the hussle and bustle around the marina. All the fishermen and net haulers carry on as they were without even flinching at the booming sound and nobody, not a single person, moves to go and pray.

Morocco is not what i was expecting. Everyone is incredibly nice and helpful at the marina, can't do enough for you and are so excited to speak english that thankfully my poor attempt at French was not needed. The officials are dressed up bulky jackets with thick lapels and shoulder pads decorated in gold leaf and dangling tassles but merge into one of the crowd as soon as the football comes on. Morroco vs. Algeria and every man in sight is staring intently at the small tv screens and partaking in a constant struggle to get in front of each other to get a better view.

It is exceptionally male centric - the women only appear in small groups and that is infrequent. Most are in the traditional outfits but the younger ones dress just like anyone else - high heels, skirts etc - it doesn't seem to be frowned upon as i had though it would. The only way to get yourself noticed is to have contact with someone else - it's a no-no. No hugs, or hand-holding as this seems a sure fire way to getting yourself relegated to a street corner - eek!

This afternoon we are off to see Casablanca with Pete and Suz. It is also Petes birthday so we are going to go out tonight for a big traditional Moroccon meal (he doesn't know this yet) and i am in process of trying to bake birthday cookies! Num num num... hopefully there will be some left for Pete :)

Other updates as follows:-

• We have a working fridge - HORRAY. Jarvis the mechanic strikes again! 
• We have had no other problems with the boat - DOUBLE HORRAY
• We made pancakes with faces for breakfast - TRIPPLE HORRAY

Tia and Jarvis, Over and Out!

Between a Rock and a Hard place

I have never really belived in bad luck playing a part in this trip. I mean, yes we have had a few niggles along the way. Quite a lot of things needing replacing, lots of minor things here and there but we figured it was just 'one of those thing'. However my mind has now been changed after being wedged under a rock 100 meters outsite Oeiras Marina in Lisbon for 3 days.

How did this happen? Well arrived very late after leaving Figuera de Foz and as we could get no response from the Marina so we deceided to drop anchor outside until morning. What a mistake!

After 2 days of the Marina aiding us in attempting to shift the anchor to no avail and us being stuck bobbing around, un-able to leave and waiting on the next rescue attempt we were faced with a choice:-

Get a diver to come and try and get it freed OR we could drop the chain and sail 10 miles south and buy a new one.

When we were told the diver was to be €250 and all our sources said an anchor and chain could be had for €150 we ummed and ahhhed but made the decision to let her go free.

Great move?? Sadly not. We gleefully sailed down to all the marinas we had been instructed would sell us the new anchor and chain... we tried 3. The cheapest we could get all up €500. Ouch! Sufice to say we refused. After heading back to the marina we swallowed our pride and got the diver out, but lady un-luck struck again. The bouy we tied to the chain to mark its place had snapped off!! Without the marker the diver tried for two hours to find the spot with our GPS co-ordinates but couldn't find it.... bye bye pennies, we will miss you :(

With our anchor gone, and being €250 down we did a bit of wallowing. To be honest so far we haven't really had a day of not fixing, sorting, hard sailing etc. Rushing to the next place, beating against the wind. Where was the fun? and the relaxing? We relised we needed to speak seriously about the possibility of giving it up. Maybe sailing around the med instead, or stopping altogether.

Whilst we mulled it over we took the opportunity to go and see Lisbon properly and i have to say it's a beautiful city 8/10. Modern and quirky, cobbled streets mixed with new architechture. Lovely people, colourful murals and awesome grafitti - my only downside would be the sheer amount of hills there.
After a walk around the castle (yes another one) we found an out of the way restuarant who, hands down, gave us one of the best meals we have ever had. Proper portugeese Piri-Piri Chicken - Nandos can learn a thing or two. We even both had two deserts each! It was so good, and amazing to relax. Really one of those non-speaking moments where you are just content to - as they say - eat,drink and be merry!

So with a smile on our faces we go to hop it back but randomly fall upon a music festival going on. Hippies everywhere, Churros being sold by the armfull (most yummest thing ever if you have not tried it - think donut death :) ) and two stages playing the most extreamly different music possible -

Stage 1 - Gypsie Punk - think Gorgol Bordello. About 15 guys with dreads and trumpets bouncing around the stage.
Stage 2 - Pendulum moving into hard core d'n'b all under a lovely wicker stage! 

Ok - so let ramp this up a bit, next day a bit worse for wear - Kindness/pity is bestowed upon us. Local marina man offers to sell us his anchor for cheap. Whoop whoop. We have anchor. Marina bestows kindness/pity on us and gives us half price fees. So with all that kindness we up and leave for Sines and decide to wait to make our decision until Morroco and... wait for it......

WE HAD TWO DAYS OFF... NO FIXING, NOTHING BREAKING - AWESOME!!!

Now we are in Lagos, (Freakishly touristy. More English than Portugeese) and just finishing off the final bits and pieces to day getting ready for leaving in the morning and heading for Casablanca. Exciting! It will be amazing to see some familiar faces in the form of Pete and Suz and to have a full week off.

I think we will keep going - i hope we do - but this has definately not been what we expected. Much harder and exhausting - yet the good parts are soooooo good. I just hope its going to be worth it! 

Tia and Jarvis, Over and out!

Movin' on South

Fare-ye-well Espana, you were great but now we are on to Portugal! I have to admit i really knew little to nothing about Portugal or the Portugese culture - I very ignorantly assumed it was just like Spain - from where we have been so far i can safely say that it is not.

After leaving Vigo (we only needed to stay for two days thankfully) we toodled down to a quaint little fishing Village on the boarder between Spain and Portugal - name: Unknown. There we had the best and cheapest meal to date and I got my frist taste of a real Spainsh Hot Chocolate - so thick that whether it contains milk is dubious - absolutely delicious though! We then heartily joined in with all the locals with wild gestures and grunts at all three TV screens in the tiny cafe, each showing a different football game - and they say men can't do more than one thing at once. What were we booing at with them? Who were we cheering for? Not a clue, but this seemed to be the accepted behaviour and was pretty fun!

We then went to Porto and hung around for two days but were sadly dissapointed with the place. Like the food the city seemed to have a thick covering of grease and grime. Everywhere looked just a bit too run down and yet also lacked any character. Although the people were super friendly everywhere, and the restaurant we found just of the main street was cheep we could see why. I went for the 'Potugeese sausage' and Jarvis had the Pork Chops. What we got was half a plate of rice and chips thick with oil and greece (the waiter proudly explained how they were Vinegar flavour - yum), and my Portugese Sausage was mushed up chicken and lard, to runny to solidify. I didn't finish it. The best looking building in the town was housing a McDonalds of all things and after three hours of wandering around we returned to the boat.
Let me give you a run down on 'The best bits'....

A graffiti worm with pants on its head...

yummy deserts from the Panderia num num num...

and a very old random tram that runs all over the city...

From Porto we continued south to Aviero, sadly motoring the whole way as the wind, when it has picked up, has been coming at us from the South making the journey generally unpleasant and poor Jarvis has had to do the brunt of the sailing whilst I confine myself to holding my stomach and waiting it out - thankfully they have not been too long days.

We only anchored over night in Aviero but were right outside a large military base and work up this morning to the roll call horn just as you see in the movies - very cool! We eneded up here in Figuera de Foz and are sadly wishing we had used our extra day here instead of in Porto. Its beautiful (despite the grey sky). Very mediteranian and has a lot of character and random side streets. We met an English Couple as we left the marina to go and shower (its been 4 days since a proper shower - armpits were firmly down) who told us that they have been here for three months and are still loving it. Retired and soon to be heading down to Greece to continue cruising it was really nice to bump into another yacht and some like minded people ( we were starting to worry as we hadn't seen another yacht since leaving the UK).

Touch wood, nothing else has broken - after the final fridge debacle in Vigo where, after two days the guy came back to us and told us that yes it was broken but no he couldn't fix it, we ordered the parts needed from Germany instead and sent them to Pete (see you soon in Morocco and thank you for receiving parts for us) and that has seemed to be the last of it, we even had enough spare time before we left Vigo to get one of the evil Chelsea Flowers off - that's right, one step closer to Croc Bones love!

The plan for tomorrow is to push on to Lisbon, which could be a 24hr sail, and then spend a day there to explore, eat and be merry. Hoping that we see sunshine soon and can I can loose the red space-girl suit! 

Tia and Jarvis, Over and Out!

The Unwritten Rule of Vigo

Apparently there is an unwritten rule somewhere in Spain that we are not aware of. The rule we think being:

" A local can stare at a tourist long past the point of being uncomfortable with no form of ramifications"

...there also seems to be additional clauses attached to this rule which are equally acceptable:-

a) this include beckoning family and friends over to come join you in the staring

b) physical pointing and squinting at you to get a better look 
and c) even bringing a chair over so that you can sit and be more comfortable to continue the staring.

We are now going to turn being the 'stared' into being the 'starers'. From now on, those who stare at us for prolonged periods and going to get their photo snapped by us, and if we have to walk right up to them and take a nice shot (with flash) of their retina in order to freak them out back... we am fully prepared!


Once again we have our 'Boat of the marina' coming to you today from Vigo. A very clean and especially helpful marina team. This time however we have a tie (Jarvis and I cannot agree). We have this beautiful classic old wooden yacht (my choice):-

and this heap of junk, mast snapped off, 'should-be-sitting-at-the-bottom-of-the-ocean' yacht (Jarvis choice):-

We have been in Vigo now for 3 days and, although we have been here before, it really is a good place to be and explore. There is currently a festival running throughout the evenings where everyone, adults and children alike, dress up in costumes - any costume. We have seen a heard of cows, little red riding hood complete with the grandma and woof and about 50 uni students (boys and girls) dressed up as wailing widows, and doing a pretty fine job on the wailing! Everyone gets very involved, the roads are blocked off and music fills the air. Each night it doesn't seem to last more than about 4 hours but the change that occurs from the high brow, well-to-do, people that walk around in the day to the happy souls that party in the evening is extrodinary! Tonight (if it is still running - we are not sure) we are going to join in and put our box of fancy dress clothes to good use. I think Jarvis is leaning towards the Hawaiian girl outfit again... hummmmm.

Problems

Oh yes, once again we have had a few hiccups with the boat. 

The water pump has needed replacing in the engine and took the engineers 8 hours to machine - costing us well over 300€. Also we found that our super expensive sails had not actually been finished properly buy the sail company back in Ipswich and needed additional work doing. I have however emailed them regarding this and their mistake and I have to give it to them, they have without question agreed to meet the costs we have incurred and gave a very hearty apology - so big thank you to 'Sail and Cover'. 

Our lovely fridge has also decided to play up and a very happy Spanish maintenance man is tinkering away with it as i type (not sure how this man doesn’t have constant cheek ache - he never stops smiling - love it!!) and finally we found that during the crossing our spinnaker pole took a nose dive to the bottom of the sea! Now these things from some research appeared to be pretty pricey, but the lovely Marina lady (that is now her official name) got us a second-hand one for only €150. As you can see Jarvis was very chuffed about this.

Our first crew member Mark has now officially left us now. He went on his merry way back to the UK yesterday and he will be very missed. A great laugh and a great help, we couldn't have asked for a better person to do the crossing with us - thanks Mark! ( Btw - I would like to inform Mel Russel and the Harwich Girls that he has confirmed that the cushions are supreamly comfy ). Our next additions are to be Pete and Suz when we hit Casablanca in a few weeks time. Until then it will be just Jarvis and I for the sail down the Portugeese coast. We plan on leaving Vigo in 2 days time ( tomorrow is exploring day - expect photos of castles) and then the next stop will be Aviero, just south of Porto.

Tia and Jarvis, Over and Out!

Viva Espana!

Once upon a time ( roughly 4:00pm) in a land far, far away (Northern Spain to be precise) two people sat looking out to sea watching the world going by. They had traveled far ( just under 500 miles in 3 days) and it had been a hard, arduous journey (super scary, never-do-it-again kind thing) and now finally at their destination (the first of many at least) they clinked a cold beer and agreed in was Viva Espana indeed! 

That's right folks, we made it! Fare ye well UK, we shall hopefully not be seeing you for a year or so! After we left Dartmouth we spent a night on anchor before reaching Falmouth the next day and from checking the weather it looked like we would spend one day preping in Falmouth, and getting to know our new crew member Mark, before setting off in the evening of the 2nd March.

The engine was all happily fixed (hopefully for the last time) after Mr Dartmouth Engineer man saw too it (We just needed a smaller hose - Doh) and after a few runs around Flamouth we fixed up the last little bits and pieces and were ready to go! After visiting the fuel boat at 5:00pm we put up the sails and headed south and out of the UK seeing the final lighthouse light go out a few hours later - bye-de-bye home!

First day - perfect! Sunshine, oodles of good wind, we were speeding along. However it then proceded to go progressively down hill. The winds blew up very strong very quickly and we needed to pull down the main sail fast. Jarvis needed to go up the mast to pull it down as Mark lowered the rope, however the winds were now reaching a gale and the boat was near impossible to keep steady - it swung hard and pitched the boom round towards Jarvis. He ducked but a shackle hit him across the eye and cut him causing a lot of blood. He was ok thankfully... and we hoped that that would be the last of the problems.

We pulled in the sails but saw the wind speed pick up further. We were now starting day three and had been being violently shaken around in the boat for just over a day now. The seas were so high you couldn't see beyond the wave in front of you and we seemed to just surf our way frowards. Then a larger than before wave struck us on the side, it knocked us so far over - almost horrizontal - that the boat started to gush in water. We held on waited for it to right itself and spent ages pumping all the water back out again, however we missed that the wave had also knocked the anchor free of its latch until it slipped and gave an almighty crack to the side of the hull. It winds that strong, a loose heavy metal object hittiing the only thing keeping you afloat = not good! There was no option, we had to pull it back up, which meant someone had to climb  forward at night, in a gale, with waves covering you every step of the way! Skipper Jarvis to the rescue! He was clipped on but it would only take one wave, one momentary loss of balance and he would be overboard. Watching him like a hawk, waiting for the signal to electronically pull up the anchor, i have honestly never been so scared in my life. What took only 5 minutes felt like a lifetime. Other than being soaked to the bone, and slightly concussed he was fine. We were all shaken up and working on tiny amounts of sleep but by now we were only 50 miles away from Spain.

Beyond over it, we decided to stop in for the day at the nearest port - this being Ria de Camarinas. We arrived at 3:30am today, tied up and then slept like babies (best sleep ever), so awashed with relief at being still and at the sight of land.

Since then, all i can say is what a difference a day makes. Bright Sunshine woke us up, hot enough just to be in t-shirt and shorts. There was no lengthy clearing into port processe like we had been warned about and there was a hot shower waiting for us - wahoo! The town is beautiful, very idealic, full of bright colours and everyone is very friendly. Although we have spent most of the day catching up on things like fixing and  washing...

we managed some chill out time for a nice cold beer whilst we decided that this adventure is finally starting to sink in.

Now we are just hoping for the happily ever after....

Tia and Jarvis over and out