Gibraltar here we come! From what I gather, it’s not exactly the Garden of Eden, but I’m curious to see the monkey populated rock.We left Saturday morning around 8:30 after two days at the Formentera Marimar marina. The island is great and we went on walks, bike rides, had nice beach time and found good provisions. There is an end of season feel with lots of establishments closed already. I spoke with the proprietor of the marina restaurant and they close for the month of November, but open the rest of the year for the locals while most of the other restaurants are closed through April. They change their menu from seafood centric fare to meat since the locals are sick of seafood. Go figure.
While in Palma, we had gotten Agility’s rudder bearings replaced, but much to our chagrin, the noise that we had attributed to the rudder (bang bang bang in waves) continued in our not so calm Formentera anchorage. Tim figured out it was a problem with our steering. We were also in the process of re-attaching our trampoline nets due to wear and tear of the lashings. That’s been quite the project. We’ve made 100 new lashings and have every other attachment replaced, but ran out of dynamee (the type of line we use) so will continue on after we pick some up in Gibraltar. It takes me about 10 minutes per lashing, Tim is faster, but he also is doing the actual attaching so making the loops and splicing the lines is more my role.
We were able to get the steering tube repaired in Formentera and all seemed good so took off for an approximately 48 hour sail with good winds forecast for screecher usage.
In Palma, we had also had riggers replace some lines including the two holding Agility’s bowsprit in place. We attach the screecher to the bow sprit and fly it from there. We did that early on yesterday and were merrily on our way except Tim kept going up to the bow checking stuff out. The bowsprit was being pulled up and, at first, he thought the new lines were stretching, but while we were discussing it – boom – the bowsprit goes flying up pulled by the big sail (screecher). The riggers hadn’t tired the knots properly. Fortunately, it was calm out, I was able to hold the bowsprit up so it didn’t bang and get damaged on the anchor roller, Tim was able to detach the screecher and re-attach it on the starboard side temporarily, we secured the bowsprit and manually rolled in the screecher. All is well, but slow so we are using the engine. We have a reservation in Gibraltar and want to keep moving so no sense bobbing around out here forever.
The other fun news is that we caught a delicious tuna yesterday, had some very fresh thin little green beans, and were able to enjoy a potato less Niçoise salad for lunch. I attempted to substitute cauliflower for the potatoes, but I don’t recommend that. Now I realize I forgot capers! Argh! We have amazing capers that we picked up in Italy. Dang.
That’s it from the Med this morning!