Our Blog continues on the Website

We have now continued the blog containing the Grateful Red's adventures on our Website,
www.gratefulred.us. Please join us there to continue reading about the great sailing adventures we are having.

Teri and George continued - Costa del Sol

All sails up, with winds ENE most of the night (10-12kt
winds). All night following seas made us
feel we were riding a slow bucking bronco.
We worked our 3 hour shifts again and only had one needed boat deviation
when a fishing boat came steadily at us with all their lights blazing,
but. We assume the captain must have
been asleep at the helm, or just plain out to get wandering sailboats.

The Reception and fuel dock

We arrived in Almerimar around 1:30 the next day (Oct 21) and stopped at the fueldock to
check-in and top off our fuel. Very
friendly, huge marina with tons of empty condo's and many shops, most of which
were closed. We did find one of the
larger Super Mercado's for shopping which is always a plus. Seems Almerimar is one of the Winter
live-a-board communities along the coast.
George set off to make friends with a boat Evergreen tied down the
Quay. We would later bump into them
sailing with Niki, John and Ron.

Had a big lunch around 2:30 AT Franc’s on the Quay which
proved to be a very nice restaurant. Our
dinner was tapa’s on the boat and then to bed.

On Thursday, Sept 22, we got ready to leave around
9AM. Again a no-wind day so set Auto
pilot for our next stop at Marina del Este (Punta de la Concepcion o’mona. It was a great lazy day for reading and
napping on the boat. Along the coast, we
saw countless “farms” or greenhouses known to be some of the biggest suppliers
of winter vegetables for North Europe.

We arrived at Mona around 4:40 and ate dinner at a lovely
Quay side called Buona Sera. The owner
Chema was also our waiter and did not speak much English, but would call his
other server over to translate for us.
We took some group photos and he gave us his “business” card that had a
great picture of him and his chef. After
dinner we had a quiet cocktail hour on the boat with one of our finds at the
last super market. Rum Baily’s. Quite good!
I can tell you the bottle did not last very long on the boat!

We made plans for early checkout and left the next morning
at 7AM. Still dark outside and only 2 kt
winds. Our first plan was to stop in
Malaga to change crew, but found that Malaga was not a very well liked marina
for yachters like us. The next marina
was in Benalmadera and was a stupendous, large harbor with good beaches on both
sides of the harbor. We checked in, filled the tank and got our berth
assignment. This marina was more like
Atlantis in Bermuda but downsized. The marina
was well set-up for the tourist that has some money to spend. Our berth was in front of condos in a high
security “island”. Ron arrived around
1PM and got settled in the boat as George and Teri were packing for their
departure. We had a great Friday night
there eating sushi takeout on the boat from a Quay-side restaurant.

Teri and George Keeler - Sept 17-24th - Costa Blanca

Teri and George Keeler have arrived at the boat and have been willing and able to help us prepare for the next leg of this journey. The plan is to have them sail with us to Malaga Spain (the next 7 days or so). George and Teri are very fluent in Spanish and so we travel with great interpreters.

Two quick days to explore Valencia and provisioning, and we are ready to go. We have decided to start out with our first overnight of the trip leaving 4PM Saturday to sail into the night. A bit of a rough start for us, just making it to the fuel dock before it closed for the day, after a mis-hap getting the boat engine started (dead fuse on some panel...). Off we go!


Difficult to see, but the lights line around the bottom of Penon de Ifach.

Working shifts through the night, I awoke for my 3AM turn at the helm to fine we had we arrived at Puerto de Calpe, with a spectatular Penon de Ifach, a very large Rock all lit up with lights. It was not entirely clear how to get in the harbor and exactly where the safer anchorages due to all the lights on the rock and the shoreline, so group decision was to motor on to Puerto de Santa Pola.

Arrived around 10AM Sunday morning, The marina was very active being a weekend, but we managed to relax, shower, get some walking in (several beaches on each side of the marina), and fix some dinner on the boat. Our night stay was 40 Euro's with included water, electric, dock security and very nice showers. We were happy.

Teri, Ken, George & Kristine

Submarine coming into Cartagena

September 19th

Monday morning we left at 9AM, set up the sails and had a good 2 hour spinnaker run with 7-9kt winds. A bit light, but good for our crews first spinnaker throw. With winds dieing, we dropped the spinnaker and motored another 2 hours. It was a beautiful day and we finished our travel time with main and jib and 7-9 kt boat speed. We arrived in Puerto de Cartagena, a large naval, commercial and fishing port around 6PM Monday and as we motored into the harbor, we were shocked to see a submarine coming in also. (another submarine sighting when we left the harbor the following evening!!!)

Coming into Cartagena

We were immediately directed to a slip that we at first did not like, but found later that it was a better place to be with all the city and harbor activity. Across from our slip was the main boardwalk along the Quay and on Monday night after dark we watched a grand production complete with fireworks, lights and period costumes. Not sure what we were watching, but the crowd on the Quay seemed to be pleased with the event. To us it was just spectatular lights, color and music.

Tuesday morning, Teri and I set off to look for a market to restock the boat. We found the fish market, along with 2-3 very small shops that sold a variety of goods that were on our lists. The afternoon, we walked down a main walkway through the center of town and ate at the "Cafeteria", a small tapa's restaurant in a historical building that is now a casino. Tapa's were great and as usual, we ate too much. We finished the afternoon by walking up to see the Castillo de la Concepcion and the ruins of a amphitheater built in the middle 1st Century A.C. From the castle walls we could see a very ancient bull fighting ring that was supposedly under some form of restoration. Back to the boat to prepare for our 6PM departure and next overnight sail.

Ancient Bull fighting Ring

Looking down at the Ampitheater built in the middle 1st Century A.C.

New!








Heading into another overnight sail

Back to the Boat, September 14, 2011

After a whirlwind 6 weeks back in USA (Stoughton) which included our Annual Summer Party on the lake, and also included one 5-day excursion for myself and my sister-in-law Maggie to St. Martin, we are returned to Valencia and the boat. I found the boat filthy and in need of total hose down and cleaning. The carpenters did a splendid job on our v-berth sail storage and our man “Pat” from California finally got our compressor to work on the refrigerator, but due to his travel times had to leave some extra parts laying around for us to decide if they were important or not. After our 2 days in the marina, putting everything back in order and re-sorting our available storage space, we think we are ready to push on.

Valencia, August 2nd-Sept 14th

Citywide commemorative sewer caps for The America's Cup

Arrival to Valencia, Ken and Fred were up to motor us into Real Club Nautical Valencia around 6:30AM. I came up and stood watch as we quietly motored into the marina looking for signs of the Reception building or someone to greet us. Being so early we found neither so we looked for a easy, available spot to tie up. This is a very large marina and many boats are gone on holiday so we had many spots to choose from before the marina opened up. Later in the morning they had us settle in a more permanent spot that we would have for the 5-6 weeks the boat would be there.

Molly flew home on Wed, but not before we all went to the rated (#) number one restaurant for Paella in Valencia (La Rena Restaurant).

Our daily afternoon "beat the heat" location. Iced mugs with each fill!



The Valencia Old Market was outstanding and pictures don't do justice.


The cured ham was outstanding and hard to resist buying an entire leg for the boat to nibble on!

Fred, Paula, Ken and I had several more days before we had to close up the boat and were able to enjoy the pool at the marina as much as possible to escape the heat. I truly enjoyed laundry for the first time this summer because of the marina’s facilities. I took the days to wash all the bedding and most of our clothes that were subject to the bucket laundry I did on the dock. The boat unfortunately many days look like a drying rack for our laundry, but it is all done and I am very happy about that!

We have gone back to USA for 6 weeks and in the meantime will have some small projects done on the boat.