Cartagena
ARC 2014 Blog for Yacht 'Jo'
Ted Watts/ Mark Watts
Fri 3 Oct 2014 09:13
either the Balearics or Gibraltar, being approximately halfway between both.
Thankfully it also retains an authenticity; perhaps because of its proud
naval heritage, but at any rate, it was a real find amongst so many mediocre
'kiss me quick' other ports and towns on Spain's south coast
There are guide books aplenty that give a more authoritative appraisal of
the city suffice to say that we found the people charming, the food good and
the architecture engaging. Even better is the climate, which seemed to be
pretty perfect most of the time and combined with the geniality of the
people, makes an evening promenade (and ice cream) compulsory.
The real start to the journey began almost two years earlier when my father
and I decided we would do the ARC in 2013 however my job got in the way and
we decided to defer it a year. And so it was in September 2014 that Ted (my
father), Rob (a friend) and I spent approximately a week working on the boat
in Cartagena. There was a purpose to our work; we were preparing the boat
for the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC 2014). For those that don't know,
this is an organised 'friendly race' across the pond in the company of other
yachts. The reality however is that one is unlikely to see another yacht
between day one and the day of arrival (approximately 15-20 day duration).
The start is Las Palmas, Gran Canaria and the finish is Rodney Bay, St
Lucia. Stating the obvious (unless your grasp of small Spanish Islands off
the coast of Africa isn't too hot), simply getting the boat to Gran Canaria
is itself quite a feat. Luckily, we had dependable George skippering the
boat for this leg of the journey - see the next exciting chapter! As you can
imagine, with so many blue water sea miles to tuck under our belts, having
the boat in fine fettle was an important priority. I was both lucky and
privileged to have Rob and my father working with me as neither of them was
doing the journey; sadly, my father had gracefully conceded, despite my
protestations, that at the age of 74 he would be more of a liability than an
asset. This was a bitter pill to swallow as this great man had taught me
almost everything I knew about sailing. The other 'back storey' to this is
that he is in remission from cancer and it was a great opportunity (missed)
to spend some serious time together.
Filled with memories of my previous visit (spring 2014), I looked forward to
re-acquainting myself with Cartagena, even if it meant a week of mundane
working through a 'to do' list that never seemed to get any shorter.
Inevitably in doing one job, another would be found, or sometimes two! The
week started well enough; provisioning the boat and re-acquainting ourselves
with breakfast bars. The evenings were still comfortably warm and Rob chose
to sleep on deck. On our second day we moved the boat around to the
commercial yard as the boat needed to be lifted out of the water to be
anti-fouled and have new anodes fitted, despite the boat having been in the
Med for only 6 months. By contrast to the marina, the commercial yard was
noisy and smelly. Day and night cranes were shifting and sorting containers
and loading them onto ships. If this wasn't enough, the fishing fleet was
moored adjacent to the commercial yard, running noisy, smelly diesel engines
day and night to keep the deep freezers cold. The smell of decades of
rotting fish pervaded everything within a mile radius. This however was
nothing compared to the smell by the end of the bank holiday weekend when
bins of putrefied fish guts were finally emptied. To complement this noisy,
smelly hell, at night floodlights would illuminate the yard, giving it the
ambiance of a prison exercise compound; it was the end of the season and we
were in solitary confinement. Although we were sleeping on the boat, the
yard was locked at night. It was in fact locked for the whole of the Bank
Holiday weekend which lasted Friday to Monday inclusive which provided
another challenge as the shops were all shut. Mosquitoes, attracted by
stagnant, malodorous pools of water thrived. We soon became accustomed to
the nightly ritual of applying mosi spray and lighting coils and plugging in
electric mosi deterrents; you can never have too many of these things!
At the end of the week, the list was down to a manageable two A4 sheets of
less urgent items; many of which could only be done nearer the time.
Having returned to the UK, many of the remaining tasks required a different
set of less interesting skills; organising various items of safety equipment
that were either out of date or ordinarily not required for sailing 10 - 20
miles in the Solent. Having spent some time researching the pros and cons of
different storm drogues, I decided upon a storm drogue from California. At
that point, alarm bells should have started ringing at the concept of
shipping between different continents, but the lovely friendly female voice
at the other end of the telephone was re-assuringly confident that "we
should receive the package in Cartagena within 2-3 weeks" which left plenty
of time before departure. Additionally, the life raft and lifejackets needed
replacing. The easy and obvious answer to this would have been to buy a life
raft in Spain. However, feeling inadequate in my command of the Spanish
language and also preferring to stick to what I know, I talked to a well
known south coast supplier of life rafts. They were a little more guarded in
their estimation of the time it would take to get the life raft to Spain and
I had given them a drop dead date that was a little earlier than Jo's actual
departure date, thereby ensuring that the boat would not be leaving without
a life raft! I relaxed for three weeks occupying myself with less taxing
problems, confident in my project management abilities. It was shortly after
this that I realised things were not as they should be. I received an email
from the marina office saying that my parcel from America was being held by
customs and that I simply needed to complete and return a form (in Spanish).
Understanding the information required by customs was the first challenge
and thankfully the marina staff assisted our communications with customs. By
comparison, getting the information requested by customs from California was
not so easy and almost 2 weeks later customs had their response. In the
meantime, I had been advised by the life raft supplier that the life raft
and jackets had left Southampton and were en-route. Two weeks before the
crew were to depart Cartagena, I gently started pressing the marina office
to make enquiries on my behalf as to why we had not received the parcel from
America. After a week of the marina trying to fathom why the parcel had not
been released, I was informed that customs would not release a parcel for
anyone that does not live and pay taxes in Spain! In some ways this was a
relief: after weeks of not knowing what more I could do to dislodge the
parcel from the clutches of customs, I could now at least go back to
California and tell them the parcel had been returned and would they send me
another - this time to the UK. Although this was not an option for the life
raft, at least the storm drogue would easily fit in my luggage, weighing
approximately 6 Kg. My attentions now turned to the life raft which was
simply 'in transit', but no one could tell me where exactly! Losing
patience, I telephoned sales manager who assured me he was 'on the case' and
that the life raft would most definitely arrive prior to the crew arriving
in Cartagena. The crew arrived in port end of September and still no sight
of the wretched life raft. This time, the call to the sales manager was a
little more 'pointed' explaining that unless they got the life raft to
Cartagena within the next 3 hours, the next port of call was Las Palmas,
Gran Canaria and getting it there in time by air would cost them
considerably more. With great relief, the crew announced that the life raft
had turned up at 7pm - they were due to leave the next morning!
