Archive Page 2
yachtmaster course continues
Two days and we are leaving for Gibraltar. We? That is Sandra, my wife and myself. Sandra will join me for two weeks for a Day Skipper course on Martins boat, that we chartered to get some more “intense” preparation. After that Sandra will return to Italy and I will continue for another 4 weeks until I can call myself a yachtmaster.
What’s the plan: We might sail to Portugal for two times, I still have to do my diesel and electrics course and my power boat helmsman certificate. Well, that should be it. Ahhh, finally and not to forget – the practical yachtmaster offshore exam – somewhen at the beginning of October. I will “twitter” you in real-time from this event. Well, I am not taking my laptop with me this time. Updates on this blog might be coming a bit delayed, but there still is Twitter:
Here is the link: http://twitter.com/kosta_k
Have fun – and I will keep you posted. Kosta
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Tags: allabroad, asa, Fastrack, gibraltar, morocco, Portugal, sailboat, sailing, Spain, Yachtmaster
busy working – 2 weeks to go
Hi all, only two weeks and we will be back in Gib. 3 weeks ago the Telecom Italia switched off our internet line without prior notice or any reason at all. We called them every day to check for the status and every day we got another answer for “our problem”. Well, we had to rent an office now in order to keep up with our projects. During the evenings we are busy learning for the course. Sandra for her day skipper and I need to re-improve my already forgotten knowledge. All the best. Kosta
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Tags: Fastrack, gibraltar, sailing, sailing blog, Yachtmaster
countdown’s up
I know I’ve been kind of lazy the last couple of weeks. Reason? Work and laziness. I still owe you some boat reviews and some more stuff on sailing. I know. However, the countdown is up now. 5 weeks and I am back in Gib to continue with my yachtmaster course. Actually Sandra and I chartered the Jeanneau 36i for two weeks including Martin, who owns the boat and is an excellent instructor. Sandra will do her Day Skipper, while I will catch up on what I’ve already learnt.
ASA (the school) was so kind to send me some exercises that I can do from home. They also offered me to send answers back for them to check. Great service. Well, its time to get back to learning all the stuff. Stay tuned.
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Tags: asa, Fastrack, gibraltar, sailing, Yachtmaster
This is a short video clip that I “shot” around mid April on our way from Ayamonte (which is the the border to Portugal). We are sailing on a Jeanneau 36i Performance. Its not very spectacular as every movie shot on a boat seams to “flatten” the sea by at least 50%. Anyway.
We left Ayamonte in the morning in round about 28 knots of wind and pretty swelly sea. It is not very deep there – see the brownish color of the water? It’s all stirred up. By the time I did this clip we had about 22 knots of wind.
Later that day the barometer fell by 3 within one hour, which usually indicates that you should “soon” go back into an anchorage or a safe marina (if possible) – otherwise go well off shore. As we are good students, we worked out a contingency plan before hand. The decision was taken within minutes as the swell was building up in the afternoon from a southwesterly wind (coming in from the Atlantic) and the wind speed increased to a constant 35+ knots. The 12 miles to our “contingency” marina were covered in less than 2 hours and by 1700 we were safely berthed. The wind in the marina (protected by the longest breakwater in Europe and a river) that night was really something. Around 0200am I saw the 5 before the 0 on the GPS above the chart table indicating the current wind speed. And that was in the Marina.
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Tags: gibraltar, high wind, jeaneau 36i performance, Portugal, sailing, Spain, Yachtmaster
The weather forcasting stone
I found this cool picture on the “Messing About In Sailboats” Blog. Should be pretty accurate – don’t you think? By the way. Messing about in Sailboats is a cool blog as well. Really worth a bookmark.
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Tags: forcasting, weather
One week to go…
Not for me, but for my “old” mates. Dave wrote me a couple of days ago that they apparently are close to the exam (mind- and skill-wise). Allabroad put some of them on a boat with one weekly clients (charter guests probably) as a “Yachtmaster and Instructor to be”. Not a bad idea.
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Gibraltar to Malaga?
Hi all. Had a chat with Dave yesterday evening. They came back into Gib yesterday from Cadiz. In total they did 4 passages, if I got that right. From Gib to Cadiz, Cadiz to Ayamonte, Ayamonte to Cadiz and back to Gib. A little bit of day sailing in between, that was it. Today they are off to Malaga eventually. It makes a perfect destination to sail to (and back) because it is just over 60 miles away, which is exactly the distance you need as a passage for your yachtmaster exam. Actually I think you need to do two as a skipper and a couple more as crew including night trips. Stay tuned. Hopefully I will get some pics soon. For now you might want to have a look at the “old” pics here on my old blog.
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Tags: Cadiz, gibraltar, malaga, mile building, passage, Sailing Sites, Yachtmaster
Repairs in Cadiz
Steve just has sent me a text. Apparently they came into Rota/Cadiz from Ayamonte at the Portugal boarder yesterday night. I remember the approach into Rota at night kind of tricky, if you have never done it before. Well, they did of course. Apparently the throttle cable snapped and they had to berth the boat under sail. Everything went fine and our training paid off.
On Monday morning a guy is coming over to bring a new cable along and off they go… Well, not a bad idea to stay in Cadiz or Rota and have a day off on a Sunday. The weather seems to be hot and sunny – what else can you ask for.
Stay tuned.
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Tags: Cadiz, Rota, Sailing Sites, Yachtmaster
Self Skippering Sign Off
Last week Monday, the day I left, they started their skill building week. More or less I would call it “proof of knowledge week”. At the end of the week they passed their Coastal Skipper practical and were all signed off for self skippering. Steve has sent me a text and you could really “feel” how happy he was.
What is self skippering?
This is a great invention at ASA and I never heard about that before. Maybe some other schools do it too? I don’t know.
Well, basically ASA is giving you a boat (between 36 and 38 ft), to self skipper within a group of 5- 6 people for up to 3 weeks. The first week you are practicing in the Bay of Gib and the following two weeks they send you off to Portugal to build up your own miles.
I quite like that idea, because it also builds up your own confidence.
As far as I heard, 6 were signed off right away and the other 6 have to get some more tuition on their few weak(y) skills. Dave told me that they will leave for Portugal next week – which is tomorrow (Monday 11th or Tuesday 12th of May). They need to build up 800 miles, which is quite a bit in 2 weeks, if you go into a Marina almost every day.
Well, that was it for today. Dave promised me to send over some pics that I will publish immediately after they’ve arrived…
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Tags: Fastrack, Sailing Sites, Yachtmaster
Portugal Trip, part 2
With Dessa a lot of things improved. Food wise especially. She bought some fresh bread and local Jamon (is that how you write it?), fresh fruits!!!!! and freshly brewed coffee every morning. That tells you how lazy I got over the course of 2 months.
The food excitement didn’t last long as everybody else did not really appreciate the efforts of having real food. Instead the sandwich party took over again with a sandwich highlight at the end of the two weeks which sounds like …. Well, it was white sandwich bread (not toasted) with mayonnaise on both sides, “synthetic” cheddar cheese (thick slices), the all british brown veggie, onion spread sauce (forgot the name), and bacon flavoured crisps in between. I just could not eat this – at all, never ever in my life….
Well, this was it food wise. Except for a a couple of exciting eating out experiences it was really poor sometimes.
Well, from Rota we made our way into the Bay of Cadiz. Actually you are just sailing out of this marina and you are in the Bay of Cadiz, with Cadiz just opposite of Rota. That day we did some exercises in the bay. Man over board and sailing up a buoy. We still had a lot of swell coming in from the west, but almost no wind.
Dessa soon went down to take a nap and I think she threw up a couple of times, especially when everybody wanted to have their sandwiches with loud discussions about what kind of spread or cheese (basically just Cheddar) we wanted on our sandwiches. Well, Helen prepared some Tuna stuff as well and the smell was not exactly what Dessa had on her menu that day…
After lunch we saw another boat sailing in the bay. All rigged up and really “racy”. That put us into racing mode as well and we made our way over to them to check out their “sail trim”. Turned out that ours was better and we soon tacked around to go back into the bay. In the evening we moored up a river in a private yacht club named Puerto Santa Maria. Not very spectular but a nice exercise area for ferry gliding and gliding onto a berth alongside in a strong tidal stream.
The next morning we just did that. Ferry Gliding from one side of the river to the other, always focussing on our transit to not lose height (or gain).
Some of us got it right, some of us didn’t.
In the afternoon we sailed over to Cadiz (Marina Americanos or something like this) to meet the other two boats of our school. We thought they would be there for the evening, and we could all go out for some dinner into town.
Bad luck. When we came in they were just about to leave for a night sail back to Gibraltar. Well, actually to Ceuta on the North African side of the Straits. However, we had a chance to speak to some of “our” friends and it turned out that some of them had big arguments going on during the last two weeks.
I must say, we did not and we were a happy and respectful crew. Actually those two weeks were the best in terms of crew and learning (thanks Martin) I had over the course of 8 weeks.
Anyway. We all took a shower and prepared for a evening out (good food) in the town of Cadiz. We found a very nice Tappas bar, where we could sit outside on a little Piazza with loads of people and good fun. The food was excellent and we were laughing our heads off about all kinds of stupid things.
The next morning we had a plan made for the next days. It was Wednesday and we sailed back to Gibraltar very early in the morning to have the tidal streams to our advantage. We berthed in Gibraltar at about 2100 in the evening.
The sailing down was pretty uneventful. A little bit of wind, almost no waves – very relaxed. On Thursday however our plan was to leave to Malaga (in the Med), to enable Helen to do her 60 miles trip. Martin wanted to give me a chance to do my second one on our way back from Malaga to Gib. A total of 140 miles in one piece. No stop in Malaga, just handing over the helm and back to Gib. That was the plan.
The others wanted to come into Gib on Thursday evening. We would not be back by Friday evening…
Helens trip started quite eventful as we were running in thick fog just around the Rock. Radar on, Life Vests, Engine on, Gib furled away and a long blast every 2 minutes. We never did that before – just in theory, but it worked… everybody knew exactly what to do and we felt pretty confident. After one hour the whole fog disappeared and we had a fun sail up the coast.
During the evening we lost the wind completely which resulted in 6 hours of motoring up to Malaga and the planned anchorage. At around 2:30 we dropped the anchor and were sound and safe…. except for…. no wind and no fuel. We had just enough fuel left for round about 6 hours of motoring.
We decided to stay there for 3 hours and started to make our way back by 0530 or 0600 – hoping for the morning breeze.
We were all very tired when the alarm went off at 0500. As I was the skipper, I prepared the brew and briefed everybody what to expect on the trip, that we were up to, the different pilotages, passage plan, watch plan etc. the whole thing.
After 2 hours we had 11 knots of wind and we got out every little bit of sail we had and trimmed her to make the most of speed. We finally did 5.5 knots in 10 to 12 knots of wind. Excellent.
Well, the wind died, came again, died and so on. At about 1500 and 40 miles we decided to change course to get into a Marina next to Estepona (forgot the name…). Bad luck for me as this wouldn’t count as a complete 60 miler. Good luck for all of us, as we had another night on the boat and an excellent Curry place ahead of us (Star of India, which is supposed to be one of the best Curry houses in Europe?!?!?!). I am not an expercienced curry person, but it was delicious and around 2300 we collapsed into our beds.
The next day we got our fuel and Dessa took us back to Gib. A total of 20 miles with no wind and the sandwiches, which I mentioned at the beginning of this entry.
At 1500 we were back in Marina Bay, Gib and started to clean the boat, ourselves etc.
Dessa went back home to Amsterdam and I went out for Dinner with a good friend I made during the course (and I haven’t seen in the last 2 weeks).
Back on the boat we all celebrated a bit with a bottle of champagne and everybody was really sad that I had to leave the next day.
The next day I went to the other boats and all my mates for the last 8 weeks to say good by. They already prepared their new boats for a week out in Gib Bay. Skill building and signing each of them off for the self skippering weeks to come…
At around 1240 my flight left for London Luton and at about 2200 I was back in Bergamo, Italy, where Sandra my dear wife picked me up. I was really in heaven. I sooo much missed her and seeing her finally was such an intense feeling… I really love her more than anything else on this world.
I am actually writing this in a Hotel room in Menton, which is must across the Italian boarder and the next town is Monte Carlo / Monaco, which we will visit tomorrow.
More updates soon….
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