Court Short

So much for getting a professional to sew the cover for the engine!   ‘Nocturne’ carry a sewing machine which they lent to Claire who then spent the afternoon stitching the new engine cover.   Not wishing Humphrey to feel left out, he also had a protective cover made for when we’re not at sea.     Unfortunately no […]

A decade ago Claire was taken to Fez by her brother and loved every minute of it.   Yesterday we repeated the experience but this time, without the luxury of an air-conditioned car, we took the train from Sale (2½ hours) on the eve of Eid al Adha!  That was a mistake but quite funny as […]

Oh my goodness, what a near disaster.   On our return from another mammoth explore of the outer regions of  Tangier town we found the wind had come round and Ocean Rainbow was no longer securely moored.   Humphrey had been thumped by a big black tyre, the BBQ bent and our poor old ensign staff snapped […]

What a great sail to Tangier.   Ocean Rainbow was certainly put through her paces.   Our arrival in the harbour was quite exciting too with cross winds gusting 30 knots and an ‘official’ guiding us into the old ferry terminal for a stern-to mooring against an enormous black tyre and concrete wall!   The official turned out […]

Fearing we might never have a better moment we made a dash up The Rock, despite some cloud cover.   We don’t do walking so we took the cable car up and were allowed to take our ‘handbag bikes’ with us.  The monkeys greeted us so Claire now has her photo!   The views to Africa were […]

Re-fuelling or replacing our gas cylinder has not been an easy task.  We have checked at almost every destination on our route to find that no one could fill/replace our style of bottle that is until we found Dirk who lives in Estepona.   Dirk said he would meet us at the bus stop in Estepona […]

The cloud’s come down so our plans to go up the rock have been abandoned – in fact we have abandoned Gibraltar and moved across the border back into Spain to La Linea.   The marina here is absolutely lovely with solid pontoons, no concrete, no swell and no need for passarelles at crazy angles!   La […]

Is there a theme developing!   After Faro, where we were at the bottom of the runway, we have gone one better and we are next door to the runway!  Only the occasional aircraft - including a Hercules - so not noisy very often!    Gibraltar is fascinating but the contours are demanding quite a bit of […]

Sailing from Rota (the main Spanish Naval base) to Barbate and 5 miles off shore we were disturbed by a very large explosion of something landing in the sea about a mile away. We immediately took evasive action but the explosions continued, luckily we have escaped unscathed so far.    We will be taking refuge […]

We had a great evening last night with Freya of Wight and on their advice we took to Cadiz on foot - well, after we had taken the ferry ride across!!  Even we can't walk on water yet!    What a wonderful city and what a lovely day.  We walked miles and think we saw all […]