10 August 2013 – at anchor, Ares

Saturday.  Day 2  at anchor, here in Ares.  The BBC is reporting that there’s a spat going on at present between Gibraltar and the Spanish government.  Ares isn’t a port of entry so we’ve stayed aboard – the prudent approach.  Ship’s stores are holding up well, and the bread maker is available if needs must.  But we are taking advantage of the town wifi, to upload the blogs, Skype and stream BBC radio.  These things make all the difference….

Before the update – some final pictures from Falmouth:  here is Roger with Ike and Becky, on Rhythm at anchor with the British navy in attendance

And with Signe and Henrik, aboard Capibara.

Signe emailed very early this morning to say that they had arrived late on Friday night – a journey of 4 days 4 hours.  We shall hope to see them in Coruna tomorrow.

Despite the town wifi, communications haven’t been so straightforward.  Firstly Google took the opportunity to “upgrade” gmail on passage; and then decided that the log in was false – maybe because it was from Spain?  Then the blog refused to upload – there were consistent error messages from mailasail telling us to “correct the error and reload [the blog]”  After a series of emails it turned out that the mailasail server had been hijacked by a very large blog, and this had affected storage capacity.  Roger in particular felt vindicated – the whole tone of the emails from the help desk was that the error was with us.  We were duly patronised.  But in consequence the news of our safe arrival was delayed.  Apologies.

It’s HOT! even in the anchorage.  There is a strong sea breeze from the NE, 15-22 knots, that cuts the heat; but the sun still beats down from a cloudless sky.  It’s 4pm and the temperature in the cabin is 28C.  The factor 40 sun mousse is well in play.  The solar panels are making a significant contribution to the batteries – up to 7.5amps.  Not to be sneezed at, and better that Roger had hoped.   But boiling a kettle for a pot of tea soon restores a sense of proportion – an immediate debit of 5 amps.

The lightweight downie has been banished, to be replaced by cotton sheet and coverlet – no blankets needed.  The downie and the Asda quilt that we’ve been using on passage will be stored in vacuum bags until the next time we’re in higher latitudes.

Being  August, there are fiestas all around.  We’re hearing the big shells going off – the fireworks hear aren’t  for visual effect, but to impress with the noise.  Last night there was a band on the sea front singing pop and rock with a distinctly Spanish favour.

The adventures are about to  begin!