Zero2Sixty

Time Off in Sotogrande

by Art on

Information

Distance (nm)
64.33
Hours
13.70
Average (kts)
4.70

We're spending some time in Sotogrande, Spain to catch up on all the persky little maintenance items accumulated during our long transit from Sweden. This is the time to also prepare for the passage to the Gran Canaries at the end of October and then onto the Caribbean with the ARC in late November. Lot's of work but an occasional day off to sail and have fun too! Our big job is to really review all the systems in the yacht. This means reading the manuals, tearing into things a bit and seeing how they work. Better to take the time now so we know what to do if something breaks at sea.

A rigging expert came to the yacht and made some adjustments as the staysail and genoa stays were too loose. He also checked the rest of the rigging and declared that Hallberg-Rassy was well known for doing the rigging properly at the shipyard and that other shipyards mostly didn't. All was fine with our rig so we went out for a sail to test everything out after the work (the highlight of the day for me!).

We also have decided the large, inflatable fenders (from AER Docking Solutions" in Florida) are terrific and much better proportioned to the size of the yacht than the little fenders that came from Hallberg-Rassy. We had four in the size of 46cm x 107cm (which we call 'Fatboys') and a couple of 70cm x 74cm (which we've aptly named Dolly Partons). We ordered four more 'Fatboys' to round out the collection. Because they are inflatable, they stow really nicely until we need them.

The davit system for the dinghy is nice and holds our Caribe CX-10 up well during passages however we want to also be able to put the dinghy up there with the Tohatsu 15HP outboard we have too. When we tried this, the motor hit the davits. We've been working on ideas for how to re-configure the system to be able to accomplish what we want and finally came up with the idea to get a local stainless steel shop to fabricate some pieces to space the dinghy down to provide clearance for the motor. After a number of attempts to get going on this I think we are making good progress and should finish up soon.

Finally, Sean wanted a larger ensign as the one we had was too small for the size of the yacht. We had some local ladies sew up two of them for us at a whopping one meter tall by two meters wide. It looks awesome and should really help attract more customs agents who want to visit us (ha!).

And of course we've had some guests visit and went sailing around the area and through the Gibraltar Strait. We can't work all the time, can we?

Passage Track

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