We write the text for our website in English. The multiple language selection feature is an auto-translation by Google. This translation is not perfect; it sometimes uses peculiar words and even expresses things in a very different way than what we actually meant. So, if you’re reading in a language other than English, and you read something strange, switch back to the English version to read what we actually meant to write!
If you’d like a shorter/summarized version of our posts, read only the “Highlights” section below and stop before “The Captain’s Log“, which is much more detailed, more like a logbook / diary and contains information for our reference as well.
Highlights – the overview
It’s finally time to leave Gelves and the Seville area to head back down the Guadalquivir River to Chipiona and another visit to San Lucar de Barrameda.
We go very slowly towards the low-hanging electrical cables that cross the river just below Puerto Gelves. We let Dione IV drift with the current at a speed of 1 knot. We want to make sure that the water level has gone down enough to pass the cables safely.
As before, it is a bit exciting…
Passing the town of Coria del Rio, where the Jacaranda flowers are beautifully purple.
Very funny… many fish start jumping out of the water as we approach! Two times a fish lands on deck! The first time it slides back into the river through one of the holes in the gunwale, the second time Sher grabs it (Wim doesn’t do fish) and throws it back into the water. 😄
We pass many stork nests. We already knew that from our journey upriver, but then they were sitting on eggs… now they all have hatched and there are babies! See, storks do actually deliver babies, lol! Many of the baby storks are learning to fly. Of course Sher took lots of photos. In some of them, what we thought were baby storks near the nest, were actually spoonbills.
When we move more south we get a nice breeze from the south-east. We unfurl the Yankee and pick up speed!
There’s 20-25 knots of wind on the beam so Dione IV does 7,7 knots through water. With a 2 knots current we go over 9 knots!
When we get closer to the last curve in the river, we notice waves picking up. When we round the curve the waves get really ugly! High, short and steep. Oops, this is the strong breeze (we estimate 25-30 knots but our wind speed gauge isn’t working. There must be spider webs in the mast top unit) against the tide (3 knots of current) causes these nasty waves. We get a lot of water on deck and Dione IV struggles against these steep waves. Hm. The anchorage at Bonanza will be very uncomfortable, as would be the rest of the way there. Perhaps even dangerous. We decide to turn around and go back around the corner where the water was flat.
We sail back against the current to the place where the waves started. We’ll have to wait here till the wind eases down. Maybe tomorrow…
We stay two nights and then are ready to continue on. It is a gorgeous morning. Almost no wind. With 2 knots of current on our stern, the Marvelous Mighty Mitsu has an easy morning pushing us out of the estuary with 7 knots over ground.
There’s San Lucar de Barrameda. Just beyond is open sea… it’s been a long time since we’ve seen that! But we loved our trip up the Guadalquivir River and our time in Seville!
At 1000h, we arrive at the Chipiona marina. Our friends from “Smile” and “Birdsong” are there at the waiting pontoon to welcome us! We tie up close to the end dock and immediately see that there is a seagull problem… LOTS of seagulls, which means lots of seagull poop. Wim cleans a path to our boat and starts a seagull training program.
We go scootering to Sanlúcar de Barrameda and have our bottles filled with Moscatel Sherry!
After a nice ride of half an hour we arrive in the center of Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
They are preparing Feria here, for next week. The same style as in Sevilla but on a much smaller scale.
We meet with Tom and Marcia from the boat “Bird Song” who went by bus, and with a coffee on a terrace we decide which winery/bodega we’ll visit. We’ve seen La Gitana, so we decide to visit a small, artisan bodega now instead. Sher makes a phone call to “Mar7” and we are welcome there.
The lady (6th generation winemaker) explains everything about their sherries and we have taste of 7 of their wines, from Manzanilla (very dry and salty) to Pedro Ximinez (the very sweetest)! Their Cream sherry, Moscatel, and Pedro Ximinez are wonderful and our favorites, though all are great. They are all “en rama”, which means direct from the cask and unfiltered. That gives it a special and most delicious flavor!
It’s amazing how consistent the flavors are, from very dry sherry to the very sweet one.
After the tasting, our bottles get filled from the casks! We decide that Mar7 is even better than the Hidalgo La Gitana, so the bottles we planned to fill at Hidalgo are now being filled with Mar7 instead!
This is our favorite: Moscatel.
But we have some small bottles of Pedro Ximinez as well, because it is like drinking velvet! Very sweet, but oh so fine!
After a tapas lunch on the town square we drive back to Chipiona along the river side where we sailed by, the day before yesterday.
Today, we’ll sail to Puerto Sherry. There’s an anchor bay which seems to be nice.
Photo by “Bird Song”, sailing near us. At 1700h we arrive at the anchorage near Puerto Sherry. It’s a Saturday and the weather is beautiful so there are many day-visitors anchored. There’s loud music from a club at the shore. Well, we find a good anchor spot and the holding is great.
Close to sunset most daytime boats are gone and it’s just “Smile”, “Bird Song”, 3 other boats and us anchored. At midnight, the music from the dance club stops and we have a very quiet night, gently rocking on the very light ocean swell 😊
It has been a long time since Sher was able to paddle on her SUP, but now the weather is lovely… no wind, no waves, no current, so off she goes!
We see that several of the tell tales (the little strips of fabric on the sails that tell us about the wind in the sail) were missing, so Wim decides to lower the sail so we can replace them. As he does, he notices that the D-shackle holding the sail to the halyard is loose! Oh no!!! Good that he sees this before it comes out completely. He also sees that the chafe protection on the halyard is worn through, so we do all the necessary repairs…
Then it’s on to our next project… removing the old solar panels from the roof of the deck salon and preparing for the new ones. We lift a corner by pushing a sharpened putty knife under the panel (in the sealant) and drill 2 holes. Then we lift the panel with the main halyard, pulling it firmly while cutting the sealant with a sharp knife.
While Sher is making a new pajama for one of the big round boat fenders, Wim finishes the other half of sealant removing on the deck salon roof.
Once the old panels are off, we do some sandblasting to remove the bits of rust that were under the panels. We use about a kilo of Blasterglass and, of course, it’s all over the boat. We recycle and can reuse the glass beads. We use a clean bag in the Festool vac and we sift it when it goes back in the container.
Sher vacuums everything while Wim starts applying the first layer of primer (minutes after blasting).
Sher finishes the new boat fender pajama. With each new boat fender pajama comes improvements in design! 😃
We clean the hull with the electric scrubber. Wim does the starboard side and Sher the port side. The water temperature is nice: 24ºC. There’s a muddy layer on the hull which is easy to remove. The prop is clean, on the bow thruster prop we scratch off some small barnacles.
The anchorage here in Puerto Sherry is becoming increasingly more uncomfortable with the swell entering. Wim isn’t sleeping well, so it’s time to cross the bay over to Cadiz!
The Captain’s Log – the complete story
May 23.
At 1430h, just after high tide, we depart from our berth in Puerto Gelves.
We go very slow to the electrical cables. We let Dione IV drift with the current at a speed of 1 knot. We want to make sure that the water level has gone down enough to pass the cables safely.
As before, it is a bit exciting…
By reversing the engine a bit we go very, very slow near the cables. But, as usual, we pass without a problem.
With 2 knots of current on our stern we sail down the river.
Passing the town of Coria del Rio where the Jacaranda flowers are beautifully purple.
Very funny: many fish jump out of the water as we approach! Two times a fish lands on deck! The first time it slides back into the river through one of the holes in the gunwale, the second time Sher grabs it and throws it back into the water 😄
A small plane keeps crossing our path and circling around us at a low altitude. We presume that it’s flying lessons.
At 1800h, when the current reduces, we anchor at a spot where the river is wide.
So we can stay far from the buoyed channel where the big cargo vessels pass.
It’s a tranquil place. There’s hardly any wind so Dione IV nicely drifts behind her anchor in the current.
May 24.
We have a very quiet night. Only once we woke up by a big wake of a passing cargo vessel.
Around 1400h the tide starts to turn and we hoist our anchor.
We were a little bit early. When we leave the anchorage and turn into the buoyed channel we still have a bit of current against us. No problem, we should have plenty of time to reach the anchorage at Bonanza before the tide turns.
The big boys don’t care about a little current against them: they pass us with a speed of 10 knots.
We pass many stork nests. We already knew that from our way upriver but now, they all have baby’s! Many of the baby-storks are learning to fly.
When we move more south we get a nice breeze from the south-east. We unfurl the Yankee and pick up speed!
A real nice speed! There’s 20-25 knots of wind on the beam so Dione IV does 7,7 knots through water. With a 2 knots current we go over 9 knots!
When we get closer to the last curve in the river we notice waves picking up. When we round the curve the waves get really ugly! High, short and steep. Oops, this is the strong breeze (we estimate 25-30 knots but our wind speed gauge isn’t working. There must be spider webs in the mast top unit) against the tide (3 knots of current) causes these nasty waves. We get a lot of water on deck and Dione IV struggles against these steep waves. Hm. The anchorage at Bonanza will be very uncomfortable. Perhaps even dangerous. We decide to turn around and go back around the corner where the water was flat.
We sail back against the current to the place where the waves started. We’ll have to wait here till the wind eases down. Maybe tomorrow…
We anchor close to the south shore, as far as possible from the buoyed channel. Although there’s a strong breeze (almost on our our beam) and a strong current the anchorage is pretty calm. Good decision, we say to each other!
We have a gorgeous sunset!
May 25.
We have the ebb tide in the very early morning and in the afternoon. We decide to skip the early morning tide although the wind forecast is good (almost no wind). But we don’t like to sail here in the dark. In the afternoon, we’ll have a strong breeze again so that will cause these ugly waves.
We decide to wait till tomorrow. The ebb tide will be an hour later (we can depart at daylight) and the wind forecast for the early morning looks fine.
So, we spend an easy day. It’s pretty warm: 35ºC but the very low humidity (20%) and the strong breeze make it very bearable.
Because the wind is almost on our beam, Dione IV turns about 45º in the current. Pulling pretty strong on her anchor! But our magnificent Vulcan anchor is holding perfectly! Wim experiments with the bridle. The Tipto12 dock line we used squeaked terribly on the anti-chafing protection on the eye. Well, we had already decided that we needed a stronger bridle: about 10mm Dyneema (breaking strength 10 tons) We have a 10mm Dyneema line on board so we decide to try that. Wim does some experiments with the length when we turn into the wind and current. We used 5m in the past but actually it looks better with a shorter bridle: 2m. That just stays free from the water stay and the advantage is that the chain can be on top the lines instead of hanging loosely in between the lines (which makes noises sometimes).
May 26.
At sunrise (0700h), we lift our anchor. Seeing the mud on the chain, we estimate it was dug in the heavy mud for about 2m deep!
It a gorgeous morning. Almost no wind. With 2 knots of current on our stern, Mighty Mitsu has an easy morning pushing us out of the estuary with 7 knots over ground.
Around the corner. This is something different from the day before yesterday!
Totally flat.
There’s San Lucar de Barrameda.
Open sea! That’s a long time ago, that we’ve seen that.
Here we see the muddy river joining the clear blue ocean…
We still had a knot of current with us but this is where it’s is going to change…
At 1000h, we arrive at Chipiona marina. Our friends of “Smile” and “Birdsong” are waiting at the pontoon to welcome us!
May 28.
Today, we’ll go to Sanlúcar de Barrameda and have our bottles filled with Moscatel Sherry!
After a nice ride of half an hour we arrive in the center of Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
They are preparing Feria here, for next week. The same style as in Sevilla but on a much smaller scale.
Thousands of paper lantern lights.
We meet with Tom and Marcia from the boat “Bird Song” who went by bus and with a coffee on a terrace we decide which winemaker we’ll visit. We’ve seen La Gitana so we decide to visit a small, artisan bodega now. Sher makes a phone call to “Mar7” and we are welcome there.
The lady (6th generation winemaker) explains everything about their sherry’s and we have taste of 7 sherry’s from Manzanilla (very dry) to Pedro Ximinez (very sweet)!
It’s amazing how consistent the flavors are, from very dry sherry to the very sweet one.
After the tasting, our bottles get filled from the casks!
This is our favorite: Moscatel.
But we have some small bottles of Pedro Ximinez as well.
After a tapas lunch on the town square we drive back to Chipiona along the river side where we sailed by, the day before yesterday.
May 30.
Today, we’ll sail to Puerto Sherry. There’s an anchor bay which seems to be nice.
Before we leave Wim climbs into the main mast to check the windset. The little cupped rotor isn’t rotating since we left Puerto Gelves. Hm. It seems like the bearings are a bit stiff or dirty and after he moves it a bit it’s running again. While being here, it’s a good opportunity to do a rigging inspection. He has a good close look at everything and all is fine.
It’s a lovely sailing day with a light breeze from the west!
The wind speed indicator isn’t right yet. Although it’s running, it shows too less wind speed. We need to have a closer look at that…
Photo by “Bird Song”, sailing near us.
At 1700h we arrive at the anchorage near Puerto Sherry. It’s a Saturday and the weather is beautiful so there are many day-visitors anchored. There’s loud music from a club at the shore. Well, we find a good anchor spot and the holding is great.
Close to sunset most daytime boats are gone and it’s just “Smile”, “Bird Song”, 3 other boats and us anchored. At midnight, the music from the dance club stops and we have a very quiet night, gently rocking on the very light ocean swell 😊
May 31.
It has been a long time since Sher was able to paddle on her SUP, but now the weather is lovely… no wind, no waves, no current, so off she goes!
Yesterday during sailing we noticed one of the tell-tales from the Yankee was missing and another one had gone half loose. There’s no wind this morning so that’s a nice opportunity to lower the sail and stick 2 new tell-tales to it. We have spare ones on board.
When Wim lowers the sail up to the level where the tell-tale is missing (there’s no need to lower the big sail any further), he suddenly has some gut feeling: fully lower it at have a look at the top of the sail. At the same time, he thinks: bullshit, I inspected it yesterday. Hm. Funny contradicting thoughts… Anyway, he lowers the sail completely.
Guess what! The D-shackle on the sail has become almost loose! The pin has almost come out. It’s sitting with only 1 turn in its thread! Oops… That could have been an unpleasant situation at sea. If it would have come loose the sail would have dropped down and we would have been climbing to the mast top to get the swivel + halyard. At sea, that’s almost impossible.
We don’t know what caused this. The most plausible reason is that we simply forgot to tighten it when we hoisted the sail (2 years ago in Harlingen). It’s not moving, not vibrating, there’s a high tension from the halyard on it, it’s nearly impossible that it worked itself loose.
Well, we’re happy we found it before it caused a problem. Wim tightens it very firmly and it should be good. But checking how far the pins are screwed in will be part of rigging inspections in the future!
Another thing we see is that the rubber seal on the bottom part of the swivel has deteriorated. From UV? Not a big problem, but next time we see a rigger we’ll ask his advise. Big job to replace it… The entire fore stay and the drum will have to be taken off…
The top seal is fine. It’s protected from UV by a plastic ring.
Another issue is that the chafing protection on the Dyneema halyard is severely damaged. We knew that already and we know what is causing this: when we use the spare (forward-) halyard to hoist the spinnaker pole on port side, this halyard crosses over the Yankee halyard and causes chafing. The carbon chafing protection sleeve wasn’t strong enough for that and since we know this, we use the spinnaker halyard as a topping lift for the pole.
Anyway, Sher thinks it should be repaired! We have anti-chafing material on board!
June 1.
Since our new solar panels will be ready this week and we’ll receive them next week (hopefully), we start to remove the old panels. We’ll need some time to repair some paint and with the panels removed we can do a cross-check with Mito Solar to make sure the connection wires are in the right positions.
We lift a corner by pushing a sharpened putty knife under the panel (in the sealant) and drill 2 holes. Then we lift the panel with the main halyard, pulling it firmly while cutting the sealant with a sharp knife.
It’s easier than we expected.
We pull off some paint but that’s not a problem, we’ll have to paint some spots anyhow. In a few places there was some water penetrated under the panels and that caused the paint gone bad. When we install the new panels we’ll have to take better care about the sealant on the edges…
Next job is to remove the remains of the sealant as good as possible to have a nice smooth surface. Wim uses the Fein Multimaster with a sealant cutting blade. But it’s a hell of a job! After cutting the entire afternoon he’s halfway.
June 2.
While Sher is making a new pajama for one of the big round boat fenders, Wim finishes the other half of sealant removing on the deck salon roof.
After sanding the surfaces he treats some rusty spots with the needle hammer.
June 3.
In the morning, there’s almost no wind so that’s a good opportunity to sand-blast the rusty spots and the bare steel spots.
We use about a kilo of Blasterglass and of course, it’s all over the boat. We recycle and can reuse that. We use a clean bag in the Festool vac and we sift it when it goes back in the container.
Sher vacuums everything while Wim starts applying the first layer of primer (minutes after blasting).
Yes, the Blaster glass is everywhere!
First layer of Interprotect primer applied.
Sher finishes the new fender pajama 😃
June 4-5.
2 layers of primer per day so 6 layers should protect it. After we have glued the new solar back we will paint the entire roof in high gloss.
We clean the hull with the electric scrubber. Wim does the starboard side and Sher the port side. The water temperature is nice: 24ºC. There’s a muddy layer on the hull which is easy to remove. The prop is clean, on the bow thruster prop we scratch off some small barnacles.
The anchorage here in Puerto Sherry is becoming increasingly more uncomfortable with the swell entering. Wim isn’t sleeping well, so it’s time to cross the bay over to Cadiz!
Leave a Reply