Puerto Gelves

At exactly 8am the bridge opens for us… Bye-bye Sevilla! 30 minutes later we reach the lock and it’s already open and waiting for us.

Project time again… We’ve decided to make templates of all our windows and send these to the NL to have the one window made that needs replacing, and have all the others on file for the future. So, Wim scooters to the Leroy Merlin (half an hour drive from here) and buys a roll of craft paper.

Then, she puts transparent tape around the edges to keep a nice shape in the craft paper and so that it doesn’t tear.

Well, since Wim has to go to the funeral in the NL, he can deliver the templates personally!

At low tide, our sinks don’t drain. They’re deep in the mud 😅

At high tide everything is normal again, of course.

The first night he stays with his oldest daughter and her husband. It’s so nice to see his little granddaughter! Her father is playing roller coaster with her 😂.

At night, a very bright street light shines precisely through a portlight into our bed… disturbing. Wim thinks that it won’t look very nice to just tape a piece of black plastic over it, but it’s better to be able to sleep. But Sher has an idea…. she cuts a nice piece of fabric that Wim’s Mom gave her with sea creatures on it, leftover from the beautiful tote bag she made us, and it looks terrific 🙂! It also helps block the sun out of the lower salon and keeps it cooler during the day.

Wim climbs up the mizzen mast and sits in the bosun chair to disconnect the old cables of the wind generator.

He’s working very focused, not to drop any parts. He disconnects the old cables and prepares a feeding line to pull through the new cables. Ugh! The line breaks! We need to start again. We use heavier line and tie weights to the end, so we can get it through the mast. Success! Now we can pull through the new cables. It’s a bit tough, but eventually we get it!

While Wim sticks new guiding lines to the cables on deck, Sher gets back behind her Pfaff and finished this lovely flowery top 😍

These are the new cables. They are connected into the junction cabinet in the aft cabin.

Job done!

Now, we have to wait till we get +20 knots of wind and test if the wind generator stops.

Sher decides to make her own polka-dot outfit (without ruffles) to celebrate the Feria 😄. So, she buys some Dione IV appropriate color polka-dot fabric.

We have a few rusty spots here and there. With a steel boat, you always need to keep after the rust. They are old spots that were treated before. In the past, we used a rust stabilizer liquid but that appears to be rubbish. The rust simply continues spreading under the paint. So, we have changed our strategy: remove all rust thoroughly by sand-blasting and then quickly painting the spot. That seems to work much better, at least, the spots we have treated this way last year are still fine. But our little sandblaster has trouble blasting the layers of rust and the layers of paint away. That’s why we’ve bought a needle hammer. Using pressurized air, the steel needles hammer everything away until bare steel is visible.

Same procedure with some other spots…

After that, Wim sand-blasts. That results in a shiny, very rough, steel surface.

We have prepared the 2k primer (International Interprotect) in advance.

Meanwhile, Sher is sewing her Feria outfit 🙂

It’s a half-hour scooter ride to the Feria area. We know the way because we saw the setting-up of the festival area right behind the Cub Nautico marina where we were.

In the city. Carriages on their way to the Feria area. The ladies are singing 🙂

Lots of horses cross the streets. The ladies are sitting Amazon-style (side saddle).

People rent a carriage to bring them to a Caseta (tents). Most of the Casetas are private. You have to be invited by a family.

Very colorful! Ladies dress in “Trajes de Flamenco”, men dressed “Traje corto”, though the gentleman below is in a normal jacket, not the traditional short jacket.

Sher thinks these horses wear ear-pajamas 😄

It also reminded Sher of when she was little and her Grandfather held her up so she could see the horse pulling a carriage (photo below)… many years ago and in New York.

Polka-dots here, polka-dots there,
polka-dots everywhere,
even on Sher! 😄

There’s a nice breeze blowing over the river and Sher takes a minute to enjoy the fresh air. She has a very runny nose from all the horses, the dust, and the pollens in the Feria area… it all made her allergies come up.

In Dione IV’s interior, we have carpet tiles on the floor. We renewed them 2 years ago but Wim knows from experience they get dirty over the years. Even though we have a good vacuum cleaner and we vacuum every few days. So, it’s time for some carpet-laundry 😅

The result is amazing!

Here you see the difference. From brownish to bright teal!

Bye-bye Sevilla!

After half an hour we arrive at the lock. It’s already open for us.

After the lock, we turn into the Guadalquivir river. We anchor because we have to wait for low tide to pass under the electricity cables. Low tide will be 1600h.

We spend an easy day. The weather is lovely, there’s no wind, so Dione IV has her bow in the current and we’re not turning like crazy around our anchor like last time here.

We watch the drying shore and a Red Kite eating a dead fish.

At 1700h, just after low tide, we hoist anchor and move carefully under the electricity cables. We call the harbormaster at Puerto Gelves and he says we have to wait at the guest pontoon because we’ll have a berth in the marina and that’s too shallow till 1900h. So we moor at the pontoon at the entrance where we were before and wait. At 1900h, the harbormaster shows up and helps us moor on a pontoon in the marina.

We’re still involved in our “window issue”. The guy at Hora Ship Windows really prefers paper templates. We’ve decided to make templates of all our windows and send these to the NL. So, Wim scooters to the Leroy Merlin (half an hour drive from here) and buys a roll of craft paper.

While he’s in the store he receives a phone call from his brother. Their father has passed away. That was no surprise because the man was under palliative sedation and he was 99 years old. Only a couple of months away from 100. And about 95 years in good health. So, it’s no drama but still a bit sad. Wim has to prepare a journey to the NL for the funeral…

Back on board, we take the craft paper over the windows and make a fold over the edges of the aluminum frames.

Sher cuts the folded marks with her well-known precision 🙂

Then, she puts transparent tape around the edges to keep a nice shape in the craft paper.

Well, since Wim has to go to the funeral in the NL, he can deliver the templates personally!

Yes, at low tide, it’s shallow here.

At spring tide, we have about 40cm beneath the waterline. But at our beam, we can see mud drying out. That means we sink about a meter in the mud!

At low tide, our sinks don’t drain. They’re deep in the mud 😅

At high tide everything is normal of course.

A HUGE hardware store (Leroy Merlin) is half an hour scooter ride away. Never seen that much toilet seats!!

The first night he stays with his oldest daughter and her husband. It’s so nice to see the little granddaughter! Her father is playing roller coaster with her 😂.

Next day is the funeral. It’s a nice ceremony and it’s nice to see all family afterwards.

After a good weekend, Wim’s back on Dione IV at Puerto Gelves. She’s covered in yellow dust! Big cleaning job…

Wim’s got a nasty gum inflammation. The reduced physical resistance caused by the traveling takes it’s toll… But the vitamin C from the great Andalusia oranges cures it quickly!

This has 9.8 tons breaking load. Same as our chain. No more weakest link!

The first link of the chain has some wear and the 2 links behind it are a bit rusty.

So, Wim cuts these off.

Teflon tape goes around the 2 half’s

A big cone keeps everything together. It’s secured by 4 turns of stainless steel wire.

Beautiful! Very sturdy.

This will make us sleep better when at anchor!

Another thing Sher brought from the US are a bunch of parts for the Sailrite sewing machine. And a new case for it!

The case we got when we bought the Sailrite was pretty old and started falling apart. This new one is a really nice flightcase .

Yay!

And it still fits perfectly under the salon table.

Another thing Sher brought from the US is a new chain hook. Also made by Mantus.

It opens up…

… and it closes around the chain with a latch.

Great! 👍🏻

Remember the situation when we were at anchor and the chain hook released itself? That wont happen with this one. We love these improvements! It makes Dione IV more reliable and better equipped all the time.

The yellow line is temporarily. We will have new lines made with a breaking load of 10 tons. This yellow one is 5 tons.

This is really a very sturdy piece of equipment! 💪🏻 Breaking load: 10 tons.

Again, even better sleep when we’re at anchor!

Wow! A turtle in this dirty water. How can it survive??

At night, a very bright street light shines precisely through a portlight into our bed. Disturbing. Wim thinks that it won’t look very nice to just tape a piece of black plastic over it, but it’s better to be able to sleep. But Sher has an idea…. she cuts a nice piece of fabric that Wim’s Mom gave her with sea creatures on it, leftover from the beautiful tote bag she made us, and it looks terrific 🙂! It also helps block the sun out of the lower salon and keeps it cooler during the day.

We have quite warm days, over 30ºC in the afternoon. The nights and the mornings are pleasantly cool. There’s no wind at all. So, in the morning Wim climbs up the mizzen mast and sits in the bosun chair to disconnect the old cables of the wind generator.

He’s working very focused, not to drop any parts.

When the cables are disconnected he connects 2 temporary cables between the 3 phases to keep the wind generator short-circuited (brake) in case a breeze comes up. He tapes a thin guiding line on one of the cables so we can pull the new cables with that.

After that, he pours dish washing detergent in the cable tray, using a little funnel with a little hose, to make the cables slippery. Wim remembers he had to to that when he installed the cables when the mast was new. The cable tray is pretty narrow for the 3 thick (16㎟) cables.

Down at the mast base the dish washing detergent drips out. So, it should be well lubricated… We start pulling the cables. This is an exiting moment: if the cables don’t move, we have to lower the entire mast. That will be a couple of days of work 😖.

But! One cable moves! With a lot force (it goes around a sharp curve at the foot of the mast) we are able pull it out.

The other two cables are easy.

Preparing the new cables. We use 10㎟ solar cable. The copper cores are tinned so it won’t corrode easily like the old cables (see picture below). 16㎟ was oversized: the max peak current is about 60A at 12v. Divided over 3 phases. So, that’s about 20A per phase. And, the voltage coming from the wind generator is considerably higher than 12v (minimal 15v, max 100v) so the current will be even lower. And, the Victron MPPT (which is converting this voltage to our battery bank) will correct any voltage drop. So, 10㎟ cable will be more than enough. One 10㎟ cable can handle 63A without getting hot. Plus, the shielding of this new cable is UV-proof. The old cables weren’t. That’s why the plastic insulation started deteriorating.

Crimp the terminals that connect to the wind generator junction boxes at the mast top.

Heat shrink tube with glue. Should there ever be some rainwater (it probably won’t because these cable lugs are inside the junction boxes), it can’t enter inside the cables.

The previous cables were insulated with normal heat shrink tube. Rainwater that entered the little wind gen mast somehow, penetrated the cables. Making the copper core corroding (see below).

Anyway, with the 3 cables ready and taped to the guiding wire, Wim climbs up the mast again. Sher pulls the guiding line in the cockpit while Wim pushes the 3 cables down into the cable tray.

Oh no! the guiding line breaks! Although the cables move pretty easy (we put dish washing detergent on ‘m and they are a little bit thinner than the previous ones), we’ll never be able to pull ‘m around the curve at the mast base without guiding line. We’ll have to insert a new guiding line and start all over. But we decide to postpone that till tomorrow morning because it’s 1300h already and it’s getting very hot.

While Wim sticks new guiding lines to the cables on deck, Sher gets back behind her Pfaff and finished this lovely flowery top 😍

Here’s one of the old cables stripped. You can see the dark brown copper oxide. Caused by water penetrating the cable. When the old wind gen was connected (the cables were soldered to the cables coming from the alternator), this was no problem. The soldered connection was perfect and the current flows over the copper wire, under the copper oxide. But when we cut the cables and crimped new cable lugs on this corroded cable, the copper oxide prevented a good connection. Although Wim cleaned the cable as good as possible before crimping the lugs on.

So, our theory is that this resistance prevents a high short-circuit current running when we stop the wind gen at high speed. Causing insufficient braking power.

To test this, we connect one probe of the multi meter to the cable terminal that was inside the boat and is in perfect shape.

Then, put the other probe on the fresh cut (which is bright copper). The resistance is 0.26 ohm. Quite normal for 13m of 16㎟ cable.

But when we put the probe on the corroded outside of the cable, the resistance is 26.7 MEGA Ohm!

Well, moving the probe a bit, to an area in which the copper oxide has been scratched, the resistance goes down to 140 kilo ohm. But this still way too high!

These are the new cables.

And going into the junction cabinet in the aft cabin.

Job done!

Now, we have to wait till we get +20 knots of wind and test if the wind generator stops.

Low tide…

We can see our bow thruster.

Warm days… 36ºC outside. No wind at all.

30ºC inside. Our sun screens and Dione IV insulation are doing a nice job! The humidity is very low (27%, sometimes even lower than 20%) so the heat is bearable.

Polka-dot dresses everywhere!

These are the kind of dresses the women wear at the Feria de Sevilla.

Sher decides to make her own polka-dot outfit to celebrate the Feria 😄. So, she buys some Dione IV appropriate color polka-dot fabric.

We have a few rusty spots here and there. They are old spots, treated before. In the past, we used a rust stabilizer liquid but that appears to be rubbish. The rust simply continues spreading under the paint. So, we have changed strategy: remove all rust thoroughly by sand-blasting and then quickly paint the spot. That seems to work much better, at least, the spots we have treated this way last year are still fine. But our little sandblaster (especially the lack of very high pressure pressurized air, we have only 8 bars) has trouble blasting the layers of rust and the layers of paint away. That’s why we’ve bought a needle hammer. Using pressurized air, the steel needles hammer everything away until bare steel is visible.

This is the result: all rust scale and loose paint hammered away. Bare metal. And where the paint sticks well to the steel (so, no rust under the paint) there’s a transition zone that will adapt the new paint.

Same procedure with some other spots…

After that, Wim sand-blasts. That results in a shiny, very rough, steel surface.

We have prepared the 2k primer (International Interprotect) in advance.

Immediately after sand-blasting (within minutes, else the bare steel starts corroding again) Wim paints the spots with primer.

Meanwhile, Sher is sewing her Feria outfit 🙂

Today, we’ll visit the Feria. Sher has finished her polka-dot top for this occasion!

It’s a half-hour scooter ride to the Feria area. We know the way because we saw the stetting-up of the festival area right behind the Cub Nautico marina where we were.

A traffic jam of horse carriages 😄

In the city. Carriages on their way to the Feria area. The ladies are singing 🙂

Lots of horses cross the streets. The ladies are sitting Amazon-style.

The children wearing Flamenco dresses, too.

People rent a carriage to bring them to a Caseta (tents). Most of the Casetas are private. You have to be invited by a family.

These girls stopped to take photos of each other.

Very colorful!

Ladies dresses in “Trajes de Flamenco”, men dressed “Traje corto”.

There’s a huge amusement park. About 350 attractions!

It’s called “Calle de Infierno”, hell’s street 😄

Sher thinks these horses wear ear-pajamas 😄

Ladies on their way to one of the Casetas.

There are some public Casetas but they’re booked years ahead! So, no tapas & drinks for us here… We have a tapas lunch in a nice local bar in town.

Polka-dots everywhere 😄

On our way back to Gelves we cross the Guadalquivir.

There’s a nice breeze blowing over the river. Sher has a fresh nose, all the horses, dust, pollen in the Feria area made her allergies come up.

In the field under the bridge there are lots of sheep. Birds sitting on their backs 😄

Now, he can correct the numbers in the photo (in red) and send it to Mito Solar. The perspective view of the photo caused the wrong sizing.

After that, we tape the panels to have it watertight as good as possible.

In Dione IV’s interior, we have carpet tiles on the floor. We renewed them 2 years ago but Wim knows from experience they get dirty over the years. Even though we have a good vacuum cleaner and we vacuum every few days. So, it’s time for some carpet-laundry 😅

We stuff the foam blocks (which we use to catch rain water on deck) into the starboard side deck and fill it with water and some generic household detergent. Then we let the tiles soak for a while.

After that, Wim brushes them with the underwater scrubber. Yep, a lot of dirt gets washed out.

After that, the tiles get thoroughly flushed with the water hose and dry in the sun.

Well, in the evening they aren’t completely dry and we decide to leave them on deck to get dry tomorrow. But… there’s a rain shower at night… So, next morning they are soaking wet. Wim decides to vacuum them with the wet-vac and after that they are only a little moist. Another advantage is that the wet vac sucks out even more dirty water. But since the weather forecast says there could be some rain today we decide to put the tiles back inside and let them dry further. That takes another day + night.

Time for another cleaning job. The vinyl in the cockpit got very dirty when we were on the boatyard in Portimão. The only cleaning substance that works really good is “Cif” soft scrub but we didn’t find that up till now. But here in Gelves the Eroski has it. The electric scrubber with a hard brush does the job. A lot of brown dirt washed off.

The result is amazing!

Here you see the difference. From brownish to bright teal!