While the vintage-car-man-who-can-fix-it worked on our pump, we carried on exploring Rota, stumbling across:

·        monsters on the beach

·        crushed rosemary and baby conquistadors in the wake of the Corpus Christi procession in the town

·        a Frisbee when I attempted to bake more bread

·        a family of kittens living under the bridge to pontoon B

·        David and Nancy (ONS JOOL) loitering on pontoon G.

A sand monster on the beach.

Crushed rosemary in the wake of the procession of the Madonna for Corpus Christi.

Baby conquistadors.

The Frisbee loaf.

“Mummy, can we have a kitten? Mummy, can we have a kitten? Mummy, can we have a kitten? Mummy, can we have a…”

Bryn, David (ONS JOOL), Bethany and Bratz.

ALTIKA

We spotted a very swish aluminium boat on pontoon C and couldn’t resist a closer look. ALTIKA is cutting edge, 41-foot, hybrid diesel-electric, twin-propellered monohull. Alongside many other extremely clever features, she has a dinghy garage and dagger boards that help minimize heeling. We went out on her to help Johan and Christine collect data on her systems for feedback for the architect. We spent many a happy hour discussing films, IT, engines and Africa over fishcakes, spag bol and wine. We watched The Big Blue and Bethany and Bryn spread a bit of popcorn around.

ALTIKA.

Bryn at the tiller.

The ongoing saga of the water pump

Unfortunately, the vintage-car-man-who-can-fix-it, couldn’t. To be fair, to be able to fix something, one needs to have something left to fix. In our case there was nothing left of the pump, so we had a phone call from the engineer to say that the heat-exchanger was fine and had been cleaned and pressure tested, but that the pump was f*^%”!d (technical term, apparently).

This is an ex-pump. This pump is deceased.

He offered to sell us a brand new engine, but being rather short of cash, we decided to carry on searching. So David carried on trawling the internet, Mike (TENGY) carried on trawling dealers in the UK (Volvo and otherwise) and the engineer ‘phoned every dealer he knew in Spain and The Netherlands – even driving around the breakers yards of Seville looking for a compatible pump (apparently the water pump from the old Peugeot XDP4/90 engine would have done).

Eventually we managed to track down a complete pump assembly in Lagos (yes, the Lagos we left behind in Portugal), so off we went to hire a car to drive to Portugal to collect it. Roughly 600 miles and 13 hours later, we arrived back in Rota with our prize. A big thank you to Alan on CLEMMY in Lagos for coming up trumps and for being willing to part with such a rare item for a very fair price. If we can help you out in the future, we will!!!

Going over the bridge that we went under last time – the bridge over the Rio Guadiana.

Cabo Trafalgar and beyond

Having access to the hire car, we explored further down the coast. Well actually we got very lost between Rota and Barbate trying to find the coast road (not helped by the fact that I was navigator and was using the road map in our guidebook with a scale of the whole of Spain to 1 inch). We drove through hundreds of acres of sunflowers, forests of wind turbines, and past scores of sherry bodegas. Eventually we stumbled across Cabo Trafalgar and spent a couple of hours walking and lazing on the beach.

Annual auditions for the part of ‘Weed’ in Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men.

The lighthouse at Cabo Trafalgar.

Shipwreck at the foot of Capo Trafalgar.

We did school on the move – history (The Battle of Trafalgar), art (Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire), geology (sandstone formation and erosion), and music (a track-by-track dissection of Classic Experience II). I don’t know about the kids, but I learned that the most significant naval battle ever fought in European history took place off Cape Trafalgar when the English Fleet (led by Admiral Nelson) defeated the combined naval forces of Spain and France on 21 October 1805 and prevented Napoleon’s cunning plan to invade Britain. The Temeraire in Turner’s painting was one of the ships in the British fleet at Trafalgar.

Sandstone and squids.

We took advantage of having the car to do a big tin and bottle shop, just in case they don’t sell food in Africa or the Med’. I managed to buy two new bras in C&A (I though you’d all like to know that). Bra shopping can be traumatic when you set off on a circumnavigation in vintage underwear and you don’t have access to M&S or BHS for a year. Just think, if Napoleon had had his way, we’d all be speaking French and Spanish and bra-buying would be a lot easier for modern-day yotties!

Technical hitch no. 544

While the engineers were down the engine hole fitting the new pump, we carried on getting ready to go to sea, topping up the water, stowing all breakables, putting all our bottles down the bilges, etc, only to discover that our bilges were full of fresh water (OK, not full exactly, but 2 inches more than there had been before we topped up the water tanks). Further investigation revealed a leak from the top of the port-side water tank, which appeared to be coming from a water gauge that was re-fitted when we had all the work done in Pwllheli. This might explain why we always seem to have 2 inches of water in the bilges (which we though was coming down the mast), and that lovely bilgy aroma that flares up when whenever we have guests!

After removing the 5 different types of screws (including wood screws and self-tapping screws) securing the offending gauge, David drilled and tapped the whole arrangement back into place, and we mopped out the bilges again.

…and 545

We must have been daft to think that anything to do with our engine would be simple. It turns out that the heat exchanger had been cleaned but not pressure tested. Did it leak? Of course it leaked – in this case it leaked €15 worth of coolant from the freshwater system into the salt water system just for starters. Watch this space!