Saturday, May 1, 2010

Puerto de Motril

Leathem and Ann went on one of the tours but we stayed on the boat and took a walk to the beach. This area of Spain is quite mountainous and we could even see snow covered peaks in the distance! One of the things that Ann has always said is how unrealistic some of the painting exercises are on TV when one painter in particular always mixes palm trees with snow covered mountains in the same painting! Ann now has to reevaluate her judgment of that particular painter since we now have hard evidence of palm trees and snow covered mountains existing in the same scene.

May 1st is Labor Day in Europe so everything is closed. It’s still cool but there are a few people at the beach. It’s now a fine sand but rather coarse and the water temperature is around 60F, it hasn’t warmed up yet.

The crew of the ship is constantly busy. On the top deck they were repairing a sail that was blown out during the crossing of the Atlantic before we boarded. They had large waves and a following sea, reaching 16 kts in boat speed at times! When we walk the top deck in the morning, we’ll invariably see some section of the boat being varnished or painted. One constant of a sailboat is that there is always something that needs attention! They don’t varnish the teak deck itself, they have some solution they apply resulting in a natural gray color. I asked about the brand but the sailor didn’t know. All the other teak is kept in tip top varnished condition. When I left the ship for a stroll in the afternoon, the crew had two buckets of paint, one white and one blue. They were looking for any spots that needed a touch up and had small rollers to apply dabs of paint. No marks were allowed to remain. Even the bottom of the launches were a spotless white. I guess when you have over a hundred crew on board, they find ways to keep them busy.

0 comments: