Provisioning Phase I

Lily with a few boxes of cereal bars

We started the daunting task of provisioning for the Atlantic crossing coming up and have had a lot of great advice from cruisers who have crossed other oceans. That is one of the great things about cruising, it feels like a family who is 'all in it together' and you see people from all walks of life helping each other out.

There is a great store here, not far from the marina. It's a French chain called Carre-four and it's similar to a Super WalMart. Basically, obscenely large. If you purchase more than 150.00 Euro, they offer free delivery, boat-side. I wish they offered an unpacking service :)

Maggie displaying the receipts

We easily crossed the E150 line on two separate trips and now have been squirreling away food and drinks in all corners of the boat. Literally, ALL corners, and cabinets, and beds. We have granola bars and cereal boxes in all our cabins, the bathtub is over-filled with 2 liter soda bottles, UHT milk by the cases, and canned fruit, sauces, rice, flour, tuna, 20 packages of tortillas, etc, etc, etc!! We anticipate one more shopping like this in the Canary Islands at the beginning of November and we should be ready, at least food-wise for the next few months afterward.

We thought, at the worst case, we won't need to shop for some things for a while in the Caribbean. Maybe wishful thinking, but it helped us justify a third cart on our trip to the store. 

Now Mehari is sitting a little lower in the water, and once we top up with fuel and water, we'll need some strong wind to get us moving! Just kidding, the 'station wagon of the seas', is ready for the next adventure!

With glossy-eyes, and a lot lighter in the wallet, 

~Hems

Gibralter wanderings

Emma and 'friend'

We made a few trips across the border into Gibralter from the marina in Spain, and really had a great time on this little corner province of the UK.

We took a trip up to the top of the mountain, and saw the infamous apes, saw some caves converted into a concert hall, the Great Siege Tunnels from 1779, and the quaint downtown with it's endless shops of duty-free booze and watches. I mean, does the world really need this much booze and this many watches? I can't believe all the shops survive.
There are other plenty of other shops such as toy stores and music stores that are fun and it's a cool place to wander around. It feels a bit like a miniature London without the fog. The most important thing is they have Cornish meat pies, and our ancestry from Cornwall, England instilled in us (or me at least) a deep love of 'pasties' Very tasty!

Miles wishing he was just a little older ;)

We also found a bowling alley and went bowling with the family from s/v Imagine. It has been several years since any of us bowled and we had a lot of fun sliding around, trying not to throw too many gutter balls! Lily and Zoe had never seen a bowling alley and were NOT excited, up until they got their shoes on and saw what was going on. Now they can't wait until the next time, whenever that may be and they were talking about it for days afterward. 

From the Rock, 

~Hems

The Rock!

Hello All-

We are now in Gibraltar now and are glad to be not moving for a while!! We had a problem with our propeller in Ibiza, our propeller actually fell off, (luckily in shallow water) so me and dad snorkeled around the Bay and found it!!! So I swam down, 30ft and got it!!  

We tried to get it fixed in Ibiza town, but couldn’t fix it, so we headed over to the main land.  We made land fall after 140 miles, in Cartagena, Spain and stayed there for a couple of hours, and then headed on to Gibraltar,(250 miles) it was a bit rolly for both days weather was about a force 8 (25 to 30 knots of wind with waves.) but we made to Gibraltar in 2 days, ready to get off the boat.

We will be here for a week or so and then head on to Morocco!!

Levi

Gibralter sites

Gibralter has been a pretty amazing stop and we're really glad for a week of NOT moving after a few pretty long sails. The most recent sail left us all a little frazzled, we wound up in a Force 8, which means we had 30-35 knots of steady winds and very large seas. Some waves were at least 20' +, a few even crashed over the whole decks sending small waves of seawater through latched hatches. Not fun. We lost about 15 dishes after one wave sent all the plates and cups out of the cupboard and all over the floor at 7:00 am. It doesn't start getting light at this latitiude until around 8:00 so it was a bit of crawling around in the dark, picking glass out of the rugs while we were rolling around.

We ended up had steering the last 16 hours, because with large swells, especially from behind (thanks goodness to on the nose!!) it shoves Mehari's back end around and the autopilot just cannot compensate for that adjustment. 

The good news: it was easily the worst conditions we've sailed in, and the boat performed really well. Also, it wasn't that rough for days and days, but really bad for maybe 6-8 hours before it finally "calmed down" to only 20 knots! It was kind of a relief seeing how Mehari (and the family) did and while no one was having much fun, we managed to make light of it and had quite a few laughs just being drenched, cold, tired, and hungry. 

Needles to say, we were very glad to pull into the Gibralter bay and the sea flattened right out and we motored the last hour up to La Linea (the line) Marina at the border of Spain and Gibralter. so, for a week or so we'll be exploring and shopping as this might be the last place to do some big provisioning before the Atlantic crossing. The trick will be NOT eating the food we stock up on. It might be a real challenge when we can't get to a stoe right away in Morocco or the Canary Islands. 

We'll post some pics soon of the last few weeks. 

~Hems