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!
