Saeta going down the highway!!!

May 6, 2008
In the boatyard. Here is Saeta being hauled out. They ran her down a short stretch of public street to get to the back end of the boatyard, so we could have been subject to the Vehicle Code for 100 yards or so. Now we are parked in the yard and are hard at work making her shiny. I have reached the stage in life when bottom paint is applied by others. My lovely wife supports me in this - perhaps because she doesn't like boatyard work a whole lot. Hopefully in a week we'll be back in the water.
Late flash: we are back in the water and have done our second big concert here in town. It went well. Now we are relaxing a little, but we only have 2 more weeks before we start across the Atlantic, so there is no lack of projects. We have to buy all the things that we can imagine needing that would be very expensive in Spain.
Write or call - life is short.
Here's a few of the boatyard locals. Daffy, the dark one, was always frantically hungry.

Proud grandparents - although what did we do?

May 3, 2008
Well, I guess we passed along a certain enthusiasm about reproduction. Children who grew up on a boat must have learned more about that than children from large ranch houses. Anyway, this is a seriously cute kid! Looks like red hair, too. So we are proud.

Other than being grandparents, we are just enjoying local life here in Oriental. We have another concert in 2 weeks and I will make a DVD from it - I'll get friends to run the new camera. Next Monday, we are going into the boatyard to get the boat ready for the Atlantic. That should take about a week and a whole lot of money. The bottom paint is $240/gallon and we need 3 gallons. It takes a lot of money to poison all those barnacles. But it will be cheaper here than in Europe and this paint job should last us for 2 years.

We have a slip reserved in Rota, Spain. If you're really curious about where we will be living, Google "Rota, Spain" and you will find some interesting travel sites, some with videos. The cool thing is that Rota is right in the heart of flamenco country and the marina is right next to the main town square with 2 flamenco clubs within 2 blocks. The marina is the same price as staying here, so we should be able to keep the costs in line if we stay out of restaurants except for special occasions. The Euro is getting cheaper because the powers-that-be in both Europe and the US have figured out that the dollar has gotten too weak and are taking remedial steps, however slowly.

It is very difficult to sail in the Med during the winter, so sailors all hole up for the winter. We have winter 2008 all reserved and in Spring 2009 we will head for Italy. We've been looking at a town named Gaeta for wintering there. Plenty of time to worry about that, tho. I am really looking forward to Italy. Perhaps some of our friends/family will take advantage of us and come visit? Don't forget to check out the improvements on the website www.sailingflamenco.com. We've added lots of new pages with photos, videos, and even pages in Spanish. Let us know how you like it.