How to sail past the most amazing places in Europe for less than $1 a day

Had a lovely view of the Spanish coast since yesterday morning, 30 hours of watching lovely villages and towns come in and out of sight as we motor (No wind since the gales) relentlessly up the coast, breathing in that wonderful Mediterranean engine exhaust fumes, listening to the ‘gentle’ droning of the diesel engine and to top it all, new rules for night passages making sleeping an even more uncomfortable task if not impossible, no doffing of any clothes or shoes in case you have to leap out of bed in flat calm seas to aid the “on watch” without a second to spare, no closing the door of the cabin to help stop the engine fumes or deaden the noise of the engine or vhf any more, why? No idea, got a shrug when I asked and pointed out that anyone in the cabins is out of earshot anyway when the engine is running and the vhf hissing and squawking all night and we had a procedure in place anyway to use the foghorn to alert any crew to wake up when needed.

This is only going to get worse as the nights get hotter and hotter, no fans or A/C on the boat 🙁 added to the list of normal labour saving devices that don’t work on Nemesis and normally make life easier that we don’t have, auto helm,  life of its own, can’t be used, depth sounder, never worked, have to take huge detours around possible shallows, waterlogged front cabin, needs airing and drying daily, anchor winch broken, all ropes stiff and jamming, many ropes too big for their purpose making sail work very physical and frustrating. Anyway, there was obviously some room to make life on board a bit less comfortable so it was spotted and the gap closed, I really hope toilet flushing privileges aren’t taken away too!

It’s been really nice to see the cheapest marinas that Europe has to offer and to soak up the atmosphere of the wonderful towns from the few hours we have in the marinas. (Except a few days we had no choice but to stay in one place in Gibraltar), got a great photo album of lovely town and scenery all from 5 miles offshore!

I’m aware it’s a boat delivery and not a pleasure cruise but with a volunteer crew paying their own way there’s no need to take the pleasure part out completely surely?

So, today, day 29, passes after an awful night for me and I think I got about 3 hours sleep from pure exhaustion more than choice and capt plans to carry on motoring all day today and half the night becuase of “the expense” of stopping. No showers for us then and no chance for me to catch up with a bit of work at a marina WiFi.

Just after starting this trip Turkey refused to re-issue PayPal with an operating licence so PayPal has shut down all its Turkish accounts, for a Web designer with many customers using Turkish PayPal accounts it couldn’t have come at a worse time and I’ve been trying to grab the odd couple of hours as we race in and out of Marinas to help clients and get urgent work done but as now the journey seems to be becoming an endurance test and boat and crew are pushed right to limits I fear I may have to depart early to deal with work as, one, I need time on good WiFi to work remotely that isn’t happening and two, also tools that only work over good WiFi or from in my office. (And it of course helps to work with a well rested brain checking complex PHP code!)

This has been on the table since Gibraltar and I’ve barely been able to do any work since then due to the gales and boat duties (and exhaustion) and however lovely it is watching these wonderful European locations go past on the horizon, I’m not sure I can endure this endurance race without smelling the odd rose to keep up morale.

ADDENDUM : After ending up miles offshore caught in a near gale and 4 meter breaking seas right on the bow yet again in the afternoon and along with it the usual rush rush, now now activity that comes along with high winds and seas, which is normal and fine but not after 36 hours with very little sleep, Steve wanted to plough on through the waves (literally, we got a shower from a few waves breaking over the boat) for another night. The only way I could get any rest was to offer to pay the fees in the nearest marina just to get out of the seas and have a rest. So I have had to and here we are Torrevieja in Spain, way too much in my head right now, hopefully a few beers will settle things down.