23rd May 2009 - Barcelona (“the Competent Crew”)

The 2009 summer
sailing trip has started and the Bali Hai blog begins again. This summer the plan is to leave
Barcelona sail up to La Ciotat in Southern France then down along the west
coasts of Corsica and Sardinia, around the bottom of Sardinia then up the east
coast then to Porto Vecchio before heading across to Elba and some of the
islands of the Tuscan archipelago.
Finally across to the Italian coast around During the winter, work had been done on Bali Hai to prepare her for the season and remedy the various problems encountered last year – the transom gel coat was repaired, the holding tank now vents outside the boat instead of into the saloon, bilge pumps have been fitted in the lazarettes, Richard’s hole in the tender patched, the generator now stops when the stop button is pressed, the bow thruster works again and a new water accumulator tank has been fitted so that light sleeper Rob can sleep comfortably at night, instead of being woken every time someone wants a glass of water or washes their hands. The most significant upgrade has been the fitting of a new Variprop folding propeller, which should provide an extra bit of speed when sailing. The prop was fitted when the cutlass bearing was replaced, which was found to be a more serious problem than first thought and a new prop shaft also had to be manufactured in Germany. This year most of the crews joining the boat will be coming for ten day to two week spells and the route has also been planned to be more leisurely, with shorter legs and longer stopovers in each place. Hopefully this will allow more flexibility. Also, with Emma on the boat for the whole trip, I hope that by the end we will at a point where we can manage Bali Hai with just the two of us. The first leg
from On the first day, expecting the normal inefficiency of certain previous crews, Emma and I went for leisurely lunch of tapas and wine in one of our favourite wine bars before the arrival of Dave and Ed, who we assumed would be late. Feeling merry and about to order coffee, we get a phone call from Dave saying that he and Ed had coordinated their travel arrangements and were waiting outside the marina gates. This level of efficiency was going to continue for the rest of the trip (more or less….). |