Towards the end of January, we set off for Porto Colom on the south east coast, driven out of Palma by the sudden increase in marina fees for the ‘season’. Porto Colom is a quaint little fishing village situated in a secure natural harbour, where one could hang off a buoy in the harbour for a small fee and use the showers and facilities ashore. We bought a new (second hand) inflatable dinghy to replace ours which leaked, but had no outboard, so we (for we read Mike, as I just couldn’t row the damn thing straight!) kept fit rowing into shore every day.
Mike spent his days working with some of the men re-fibre glassing the hull of a boat, whilst I bought myself two huge plastic buckets and got to grips with the delights of hand washing all my laundry, there being no Launderette in the village. I would do the washing and rinsing in the shower block, using the slightly brackish water, then take it back to the boat and hang it out all over the rigging. Real sea gypsies! The posher marinas (which we rarely could afford) frowned upon this practice but we never let that worry us.
I found a small café that allowed one to use their computer as an internet café. Once again there was a small foreign cruising community, most of whom spoke English, and we soon made a few good friends with whom to share a glass of wine and a plate of tapas. Mike and I, being very much the new kids on the block unashamedly tapped our friends’ knowledge bank of the mysteries of the cruising world. There still seemed to be so much to learn.
Mike suffered three strokes some 19 years ago, and is now obliged to take the medication Warfarin every day to thin his blood, which doctors don’t like to prescribe without regular blood checks. However, we managed to find a friendly Spanish doctor at the village clinic and all the tests and pills were provided free on presentation of his E111 form. The doctors in the UK had increased his daily dosage quite considerably from when we were in Zimbabwe, which diagnosis Mike never fully accepted. He was so annoyed about it, he’d frequently ‘forget’ to take them at all, and it was an endless battle to get him to take the correct dosage.
We did quite a bit of cruising around the east and north coast of Majorca, sharpening up our sailing skills. We also took a five day sail to Minorca, anchoring in beautiful little calas and taking long walks in the country. The Balearics were lovely at that time of year. Sailing back from Minorca, we hit head winds all the way, and were now to discover that Forever did not sail well to windward. We spent all afternoon tacking, making what we thought was good solid progress, only to discover when looking at the map section of the GPS that we had simply been tacking back and forth on our own path, making no more than a couple of miles forward in several hours. It was all very dispiriting, and we eventually started the engine and motored all night, pitching uncomfortably into a strong head wind.
The problem is the sail system. On Forever both the main and jib have roller furling and you just don’t get a good sail shape. However, the benefits of roller furling are not to be denied, and as we planned to goose-wing around the world with trade winds following us, we hoped our inability to make good windward progress would not be too much of a problem.
Up until now we had been flirting with the idea of buying a small apartment in Majorca with the idea of renting it out and thereby earning a small income and we had done some serious property hunting. However, as we had spent rather too much of our very limited funds on the boat and would have ended up with too much of a mortgage, we eventually talked ourselves out of it and decided to keep our lives as simple as possible. Having a bad tenant to worry about when you are on the other side of the world seemed like more trouble than it was worth, and this was a decision we never regretted.
Mike spent his days working with some of the men re-fibre glassing the hull of a boat, whilst I bought myself two huge plastic buckets and got to grips with the delights of hand washing all my laundry, there being no Launderette in the village. I would do the washing and rinsing in the shower block, using the slightly brackish water, then take it back to the boat and hang it out all over the rigging. Real sea gypsies! The posher marinas (which we rarely could afford) frowned upon this practice but we never let that worry us.
I found a small café that allowed one to use their computer as an internet café. Once again there was a small foreign cruising community, most of whom spoke English, and we soon made a few good friends with whom to share a glass of wine and a plate of tapas. Mike and I, being very much the new kids on the block unashamedly tapped our friends’ knowledge bank of the mysteries of the cruising world. There still seemed to be so much to learn.
Mike suffered three strokes some 19 years ago, and is now obliged to take the medication Warfarin every day to thin his blood, which doctors don’t like to prescribe without regular blood checks. However, we managed to find a friendly Spanish doctor at the village clinic and all the tests and pills were provided free on presentation of his E111 form. The doctors in the UK had increased his daily dosage quite considerably from when we were in Zimbabwe, which diagnosis Mike never fully accepted. He was so annoyed about it, he’d frequently ‘forget’ to take them at all, and it was an endless battle to get him to take the correct dosage.
We did quite a bit of cruising around the east and north coast of Majorca, sharpening up our sailing skills. We also took a five day sail to Minorca, anchoring in beautiful little calas and taking long walks in the country. The Balearics were lovely at that time of year. Sailing back from Minorca, we hit head winds all the way, and were now to discover that Forever did not sail well to windward. We spent all afternoon tacking, making what we thought was good solid progress, only to discover when looking at the map section of the GPS that we had simply been tacking back and forth on our own path, making no more than a couple of miles forward in several hours. It was all very dispiriting, and we eventually started the engine and motored all night, pitching uncomfortably into a strong head wind.
The problem is the sail system. On Forever both the main and jib have roller furling and you just don’t get a good sail shape. However, the benefits of roller furling are not to be denied, and as we planned to goose-wing around the world with trade winds following us, we hoped our inability to make good windward progress would not be too much of a problem.
Up until now we had been flirting with the idea of buying a small apartment in Majorca with the idea of renting it out and thereby earning a small income and we had done some serious property hunting. However, as we had spent rather too much of our very limited funds on the boat and would have ended up with too much of a mortgage, we eventually talked ourselves out of it and decided to keep our lives as simple as possible. Having a bad tenant to worry about when you are on the other side of the world seemed like more trouble than it was worth, and this was a decision we never regretted.
Lovely entries but they are nine years old. What are you guys doing these days and I mean like yesterday.
ReplyDeleteAhoy! Where are you Peggy Banfield?
ReplyDelete