Showing posts with label Costa Brava. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Costa Brava. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Costa Brava


Princess with her prince.


And the castle.


We can dream, can't we?

Meanwhile two days after the crew (Barbara and Alicia) left... in real life: It’s four in the morning and NOT a good time to be suddenly woken up to a screeching, howling wind rattling the rigging and pulling on the mooring lines. Looks like we’re having a tramontana and the only good thing about it is that I’m in a marina and not an anchorage.

Even though it’s already past the middle of April, mornings are still cold and the nasty north wind doesn’t help, so the little electric heater is humming away while I quickly poke my head out the hatch to check the wind instruments. Nearly 30 knots. Then I return to the cosyness of the cabin and my very early cup of coffee.

Costa Brava and the Gulf of Lyon are infamous for tramontanas or mistral wind. It appears suddenly out of nowhere and often reaches gale force strength in a quarter of an hour. You don’t want to be at sea when it blows, or a lee shore anchorage. Time to stay put. Also, time to check the engine, which has been misbehaving and the sails that were torn recently. Time to wait for new crew to arrive and also perhaps time to do some sightseeing of this beautiful part of Spain. From land.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Palamos

So, finally this morning about 11, Harry (a new crew from Canada) and I left Sant Feliu de Guixals and moved about six miles east to Palamos. It took nearly all day at anywhere between 1.5 and 3.5 knots. Great wind from the SSE at about 5-10 knots gave us a downwind run. Perfect day: sunny but not too hot.

Palamos is a bit bigger than Sant Feliu and has two harbours: the commercial with a small Club Nautica for the locals and then the Puerto Deportivo on the east side for the rest of the yaties. The town is nestled between the two.

I need to repair the jib here so we´ll be staying put for a couple or three days. Not a problem, this is a gorgeous part of the coast.