It’s been a long time since I updated our blog. The reason being we have been in Europe from February until July.

Most of our time was spent in Spain where we used to live, spending time with our sons and daughter aswell as our granddaughter Evie. It was winter when we arrived and it was cold. Very cold, after a few weeks we decided to visit Yvonnes brother,Jon and his wife Kate and daughter Sophe. It was pleasantly warm and the sea was almost inviting, but not quite. Jon and Kate live aboard their sailboat in Las Palmas, so it was good to catch up and swap stories.

We returned to mainland Spain for a few more weeks; our friends Peter and Sylvia who live aboard their Nic 32 in Venezuela arrived back by plane in the UK for their annual visit, we spoke by phone and they invited us to stay for a week.

It was a useful visit too, because I enabled us to renew our passports during our visit to Newport in Wales. Peter and Sylvia lent us their car, so it saved us the expense of hiring one and enabled us to visit our old sailing buddies who now live in South Wales, 2 hours from Peter and Sylvia.

We returned to Spain, took a long weekend at a hotel 300 miles south of Moraira our base. That was a good break too, 129 euros bed breakfast evening meal for two people, 4 days and 3 nights.

On our return to Moraira the climate was warming up and our little fish of a granddaughter couldn’t wait to jump in the coolish pool.

During this next few weeks she spent every day with us, and her swimming and diving improved dramatically. She can now swim a length of the pool, breating, and she can dive down to the bottom of the deep end and retrieve items on the bottom. She loves the water!

The local fiesta celebrating the fighting between the Christians and the Muslims back in the 12^th century, (nothing changes) takes place in June, Yvonne and Evie were taking part as usual and this year we invited Peter and Sylvia and our Swedish friends Christer and Gunilla, who met met in Medregal Village, Venezuela, more sailors. All had a good time and enjoyed their stay as we enjoyed their company.

At the end of June we flew back to Caracas and ack to our home Chaser 2on the hard in Medregal Village. Before we took off sailing we had some work to do, wwe decided to sell our house there, it’s not being used, especially now we spend 6 months in Europe. So we have made arrangements for that. Also we collected our new solar panels from Kenneth and Monica who kindly brought them in from the States for us. The work fine and we are now almost completely independant of diesel engines or generators. We have a wind genny, 2 – 220 watt solar panels this keeps our batteries charged providing the sun shines and the wind blows. If as we did have a couple of cloudy wet and still days we can fall back on the generator.

During this period Kenneth and Monica invited us to their house to celebrate Yvonnes birthday, and also many return visits to watch the Olympic games. We had a nice celebratery meal in the restaurant of Medregal too.

This work completed we sailed to the marina in Cumana for a night, in fact we ade 2 visits during the month, the first we paid 220 Bolivares for the night and the 2^nd visit 150 per night. The marina has been taken over by Venetur the Venezuelan tourist industry. They have removed 50% of the staff and charged more than 3 times any other marinas. So beware staying there to long. Depite what they told us that all Venetur marinas are the same price, Venetur Marina in Puerto La Cruz is 60 B’s per night.

So on to one of our favourite coastal anchorages in Mochima National Park, that of Mochima village. We arranged a meal in restaurant Puerto Viejo, where we have been many times in the past. The owners prepared a beautiful fish meal for us of Prawns, fish , Octupus and baby squid. Then he gathered the staff together to sing us a ‘Happy Anniversary’ song, it was our 40^th Anniversary, they even brought us out a cake with a candle.So we had a lovely night.

Now we are in another marina preparing for our departure. We intend to sail to the dutch Antilles, Bonaire having cleared out of Venezuela, we’ll then sail back along the coast to clear back in Cumana after a 45 day sail. Our next stop will be back in Puerto La Cruz to stock up and await Susie, Billy and Evies arrival.

All for now 

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