Blog update: Summer 2011 Plan B

Escape on CAPE
David, Sarah and Bryn Smith
Mon 20 Jun 2011 19:21

Waiting for the weather

Here on CAPE, we trundled on with school, work and so on during May and the beginning of June while we finished off a few boat jobs and waited for the weather to settle enough to go off to anchor.

 

A crowd of us went for a Chinese all-you-can-eat-for-€6.50 buffet at the Playa de las Canteras.

 

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Not a bad backdrop for a serving or three of crispy fried beef, sweet and sour chicken, spicy noodles, special fried rice...

 

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David contemplating whether he can manage another portion of spare ribs without exploding.

 

We did quite a few boat jobs:

·        built in some new storage under the chart table (takes the sewing machine, amps, the bag of hats and scarves etc.) to make better use of the space

·        washed and remarked the anchor chain and anchor, and serviced the windlass

·        put in a false floor in the sail locker, which means that we can now use the whole space without worrying about things falling down and snagging in the chain

·        various sewing jobs such as new sheet bags

·        serviced the DuoGen

·        replaced the chart table cushion foam and made a new cover

·        tracked down a spare alternator and starter motor.

 

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Beth and Bryn remarked the anchor chain and anchor.

 

Knit your own yogurt...

Or even crochet your own sun hat! With all the girls grabbed by the crochet bug and meeting up for Stitch and bitch sessions on HEYMEDE, I dusted off my crochet hook and joined in. Once I had got to grips with a couple of the stitches, I found wool a bit tame so tracked down some ‘interesting’ string to experiment with. I started off with some grotty orange nylon floating line that came with the boat and crocheted a hull scrubber which was a great success.

 

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The CAPE Scrub-a-dub (patent applied for).

 

After that, I found some lurid green plastic string in my favourite Chinese shop and started on a sun hat... Having got to the brim, I have now given up on this little project – it has potential, but I need to be a bit more methodical in increasing and decreasing the stitches if I want it to look more like a sun hat and less like a ‘Bill and Ben’ (the Flowerpot Men) hat.

 

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What the best-dressed bongos are wearing this season.

 

I name this ship...

Paul and Hilary have been renovating a sailing dinghy, and we finally had the official naming ceremony when we dribbled some chilled cava on her bows and I named her PAX CAMERA – camera apparently means ‘small boat’ in Latin (although she’ll always be PAX BACH to us).

 

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I name this ship...

 

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Paul, Kara and Beth in PAX CAMERA.

 

Gig at the Sailor Bar

We did a charity concert in the Sailor Bar (to raise money for first aid training in Gambian schools) and raised €162. The first attempt was rained off (the heavens opened just after we’d finished setting up), but we went back the next night. All the kids played too – we had 6 guitars, 2 harmonicas, a bodrhan, a tambourine, backing singers and vocals all in black, a full sound system and mics. We even had an official roadie – Eddie – who was staying on PAX. We’d all had coughs and colds so all the singing was a bit husky and Tina Turner-ish, but none of the punters got up and left the bar and we could have kept going for longer (next time we won’t save all the good stuff until last!).

 

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It is important to know your knots so that you can tie your speakers to a palm tree.

 

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Tuning up.

 

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Paul.

 

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Beth and Paul leading ‘Proud Mary’ (photo courtesy of LADYCAT).

 

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Bryn and Marijn singing a song that they composed themselves (photo courtesy of LADYCAT).

 

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The harmonica section (photo courtesy of LADYCAT).

 

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The Smith Family von Trapp – spreading the joy of ‘Counting goats’ (in Welsh of course) to the rest of the world (photo courtesy of LADYCAT).

 

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The full line up (photo courtesy of LADYCAT).

 

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Even Pepe the bar owner joined in with a rendition of ‘Sittin’ on the dock o’ the bay’ (photo courtesy of LADYCAT)!

 

Dressed to kill

We had a BBQ on PAX – a fancy dress affair on the theme of ‘Dress to kill’ – and a bit of a goodbye party as most people were gearing up to going off in different directions. Beth dressed up to the nines as a Goth, Bryn went as a sniper (he worked all week on a camouflaged blow dart gun that shot paper darts), David went as a glam rocker (think KISS) and I went as malaria. I hate dressing up and like to take the minimalist approach – I had a pair of silver balls on springs on a hair band and was going to make a tasteful little mozzie for one of them and wear a name badge. Bethany and David, however, had other ideas and insisted that I actually tried to dress up as a mozzie, so off I went to buy fairy wings to complete my ensemble. Luckily we had some pipe cleaners on board to make my stabby, blood-sucker thingy (stylet).

 

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Scary doesn’t come into it!

 

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Somewhere hidden in this photo is a camouflaged sniper with his dart gun.

 

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Glam Rock meets Malaria (whose wings are sponsored by Playtex – designed to lift and separate).

 

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Who invited Catherine Zeta-Jones?

 

The party was a hoot, and well attended by a range of glamorous and deadly characters, including busty babes from Kill Bill, Zorro, James Jane Bond (007), Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street, Cat Woman (who morphed into Trinity from The Matrix in a quick costume swap), a cigarette, butter, pirates, spiders, a corpse bride, a vampire, a member of the paparazzi, and a skeleton!

 

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Glam Rock having a beer, and a cigarette (Eats, Shoots and Leaves...?)

 

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Cat Woman (LADYCAT).

 

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James Jane Bond (007) – licensed to kill.

 

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Marijn made a lovely girl...

 

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Killer cholesterol.

 

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Trinity, Zorro and Kerrygold Butter.

 

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The Corpse Bride snacking on paté and crackers.

 

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A bevy of deadly babes (photo courtesy of LADYCAT).

 

Suitably hyper (as if we need an excuse), we got our instruments out, turned up the volume and kept the marina awake into the small hours.

 

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Our very own member of the paparazzi on bongos.

 

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Still scary.

 

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Killing them softly with our song... (photo courtesy of LADYCAT).

 

Summer 2011: Plan B

Having got totally ready (to the point of having done the shopping for bread, meat, fresh fruit and veg) to go off to anchor at La Graciosa (a small island at the north end of the Canaries chain), David had a phone call offering him a job. It was one that he had applied for just after Christmas, and as we hadn’t heard anything, we assumed that nothing was going to happen. But no, it seems that MRAG (http://www.mrag.co.uk/) were still looking for scientific observers on their Atlantic Tuna project! Within a week he was winging his way by Sleazyjet to London for a 1-week training course.

 

He passed the course (and his medical) and came back to Las Palmas for a week. We hired a car for 3 days and did a bit of exploring and a trip to Decathlon and Ikea in between getting David jabbed for yellow fever, polio and typhoid. We went up into the mountains (via a million hairpin bends) to the highest point on Gran Canaria – Pico de Las Nieves (1,949 metres) – from where we could see Mount Teide on Tenerife above the clouds, and then down to the west coast (via another million hairpin bends and a trillion banana plantations) and around the north of the island back to Las Palmas along the dramatic cliff road.

 

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The view from Pico de Las Nieves; Mount Teide on Tenerife is visible above the clouds in the distance.

 

Some parts of the interior of the island are really quite lush, with pine forests on the mountain slopes and agaves, almond trees and palm trees in the valleys. Other areas are barren, arid, volcanic rock.

 

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One of the small lakes in the interior created to hold drinking water; the horizontal cleft in the rock across the centre of the photo is the road.

 

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The sheer cliffs next to the road along the north west corner of the island.

 

The next day we nosed around the picturesque harbour at Puerto Mogán, and then made our way back to Las Palmas past beautiful beaches such as Playa de Amadores and the tourist traps of Maspalomas and Playa del Inglés. We considered a trip to Aqualand, but at €87 for a family ticket, we decided we didn’t really want to go. On the third day we took the opportunity of having a car to go back to the south of the island (where the weather is definitely better) to spend a few hours on the beach (soft, dark volcanic sand) at San de Agustin.

 

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Puerto Mogán.

 

David left Las Palmas on 7 June, flew to London to pick up equipment and then flew on to Cape Town. He joined the Japanese freezer ship FUTAGAMI, which left Cape Town on 10 June – I ‘watched’ (via its AIS track on the marinetraffic.com website) the ship leave Cape Town. When he isn’t observing the movement of fish (mainly tuna) from boat to boat or boat to shore, he has his guitar, laptop with films, e-books and Japanese and Spanish language stuff, and his mp3 player to keep him busy. As far as he knows, the ship is headed up the coast of Africa and then left across to Brazil before heading back to Cape Town; the trip is scheduled to last for 2 months. If it all works out, this is something that he can do on a flexible, freelance basis, so might just fit in with our travelling and help top up our funds.

 

We are still hoping to spend a bit of time looking around the Canaries, but this will just have to wait until David is back and it might be more of a whistle-stop than a grand tour. At least Las Palmas is a safe place for CAPE; it’s cheap and there’s plenty for us to do.

 

We'd like to thank Imray Laurie Norie & Wilson Ltd who are kindly sponsoring us by providing charts and pilots for our trip www.imray.com.

 

You can get in touch with us via smith dot cape at gmail dot com.

 

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