Back in Puerto De La Cruz
Chaser 2
Yvonne Chapman
Sun 11 Nov 2007 15:21
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It's been a while since I last put pen to paper, mainly because our
cruising has been put on hold while we flew back to Spain to see our family and
friends for the month of October. We booked a flight from Barcelona (our local
airport town here in Venezuela ) to Caracas, then a flight from Caracas to
Madrid. Yvonne jumped on a plane in Madrid to UK to see her Dad for his 80th
birthday, Susie and Billy picked her up and drove her to Cornwall, and I went to
Alicante.
Yvonne then flew back after a few days, then James
came to see us from Valencia, Rob and Berny came round and Susie and Billy
flew out from UK. We had some good times together while we were there but the
weather was terrible. In fact it was a disaster as anyone who was there knows.
We had a Goto Fria, (a local but intense storm ) with torrential rain for
36 hours causing widespread floods and damage. What are normally dry river beds
were full and overflowing to more than one metre deep in the roads,
boats from the canal in Javea were washed out to sea under a bridge that
now had only six inches of space beneath it. It was like a mincing machine, just
sucking them under the bridge and spitting them out the other side in pieces.
More than 60 boats were washed up on the beach in Javea alone. All the
adjacent underground car parks were full of water right up to the
roof. More than 2000 vehicles were still missing after we had left. Bridges
collapsed, houses and restaurants flooded, walls were washed away. Even
now 4 weeks later, excess land water is still running down some
roads. You can see more on 'Youtube' just search 'Javea floods'.
Our house is high up but we still had land water
coming through, our pump house, is underground, that too was full. Fortunately
our children were there to help us clean up and paint, James brought a pump from
Valencia to empty out the pumphouse. Don't know what we'd have done without
them, especially Susie and Billy who were with us all the time.
That said, all is back to normal now and we're both
back in PLC, you can see Chaser back in the water after her bottom
scrub and paint. We are in a nice position here, nice outlook. We met up with
Chris and Tony once more, they are still here, they had planned to see some
islands while we were away, then return to meet us, but they stayed here. It is
a nice place. Chris and Tony have arranged to fly to New York to see Tony's
brother for a week and during that time Yvonne and me are going to sail to Isla
Tortuga, it's supposed to be beautiful. When the 'Waylanders' return we'll both
then sail to Margarita before we say goodbye to them for a while. We will hang
around Margarita if Rob and Berny are coming for a 14 day break, if they don't
we may spend Christmas there or back in PLC, not sure yet. We may then make our
way west to the ABC islands then sail across the Caribbean to Cuba for
February/March to meet up once again with Tony and Chris before coming back to
Venezuela area for the next hurricane season starting in June.
The photos show our current mooring, to the left
goes inland to the Venice style village and to the right out to sea. It will be
nice though to get out back at anchor in some clean blue water, do some
snorkelling and catch up with the news from Sharky and Elmo (what a nice
name)
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