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 and contains information for our reference as well.
Highlights – the overview
For tonight, severe thunderstorms are expected. So, we decide to go into the marina of Cabo de Cruz.
Wow. The clouds we saw coming is sea fog. In minutes, the view is reduced to 50m or so! And the wind is pretty chilly. We have just lifted our anchor and we motor against the wind out of the bay.
We have to sail through the corridor between all these mussel rafts and we can barely see them in the fog. So, radar on. That is a nice test for the new radar software. It works great!
It’s only 4 sea miles to Cabo de Cruz and before we get in, the wind eases down, the fog disappears and the sun shines again.
We take a scooter ride from the marina, past Boiro and along the shore. So apparently here, the right lane is for girls and the left, opposite, lane for boys. Hm, boys and girls can’t go in the same direction here 🤔
Luckily, our scooters Thelma & Louise are both girls! So, we can drive in the same direction 😄
For a day or two there’s drizzle and a lot of wind… good to stay inside. Sher does some sewing and Wim installs energy monitors for the fridge and the freezer. Then we test the SSB radio and Wim straps it down so it doesn’t move.
And thus, the bears have a firm seat! 😄
In the meantime, Sher finished her sewing project: a lovely top 🤩
It’s time to leave the marina, and after filling our fuel tank, we head out to the south side of Illa de Arousa again and pick up one of these big mooring balls. This time, we pick one which is a bit closer to the village. At a depth of 3m at low tide.
The weather improves and turns warm and sunny. Life on board Dione IV is a joy. Coffee in the cockpit in the morning, then Wim goes into the water to scrub the bottom. We make one of our favorite meals, “Quinoa Cookies”, really riced cauliflower and quinoa, with fresh thyme and other spices. Delicious! The local no-label red wine we bought at the market was not so delicious however.
Yay! Happy!
Quinoa Cookies with yogurt sauce (with a lot of raw garlic 😅) and wild spinach cooked in garlic. Delicious!!!!
It’s getting very hot, so we decide to hop into the dingy and take a ride out to the little sand island nearby.
Back on board, there’s a job for the professional organizer on Dione IV… 😀
We have decided to use our freezer box as a second fridge. Since we have the energy meters for the the fridge and the freezer we have noticed that the little (29L) freezer uses 3x more energy than than the big (92L) fridge box! Well, we don’t really have much that has to stay deep frozen so we decide to set the temperature to 7ºC instead of -15ºC and store some stuff in there that is less frequently used.
We go back into Cabo de Cruz marina for a day to pick up more packages. While Sher goes with Marcia into Boiro by bus to do some shopping, Wim tries to clean the vinyl in the cockpit. After some experimenting he finds out that the scrubbing paste that Ingo (from the boat Antares) gave us, works really good.
After lunch, we depart from Cabo de Cruz. Tomorrow is the summer solstice and we want to celebrate that with a nice view at the sunrise or sunset on an anchorage. We pick up a mooring buoy. We’ve got the procedure down… Wim comes along side the mooring mid-ship, Sher reaches out and puts the line through, then Wim backs up and Sher walks the line forward to the bollard.
Happy Summer Solstice!!! Here’s the card we sent out to family and friends…
It’s a day with light clouds, 26ºC and 15 knots of wind from the south west.
Sher has started a new sewing project: a mosquito screen for the companionway hatch. Wim works on an update of this website. All is well and happy on board!
The Captain’s Log [T358,359,…369] – the complete story
June 10.
The day starts with a beautiful sunrise but the weather is going to change.
For tonight, severe thunderstorms are expected. So, we decide to go into the marina of Cabo de Cruz.
It is supposed to be lovely day so we plan to head to Cabo de Cruz by the end of the afternoon.
But, as usual here, the weather is a surprise… By the end of the morning the wind suddenly shifts from the northeast to the west and increases to 20 knots, clouds appear and the temperature drops 15 degrees. Hm. We decide to leave earlier.
Wow. The clouds we saw coming is sea fog. In minutes, the view is reduced to 50m or so! And the wind is pretty chilly. We have just lifted our anchor and we motor against the wind out of the bay.
We have to sail through the corridor between all these mussel rafts and we can barely see them in the fog. So, radar on. That is a nice test for the new radar software. It works great!
It’s only 4 sea miles to Cabo de Cruz and before we get in, the wind eases down, the fog disappears and the sun shines again.
In Club Nautico Boiro (Cabo de Cruz), a very friendly marinero receives us at the pontoon.
We are not entirely happy with the berth because strong winds from the south are expected in the next few days and this is lee shore. But there is no other berth available. So we put all our fenders out and hope there will be no swell entering the port. But it looks pretty well sheltered.
The dock is handy to fit the dinghy floor cover. It fits nicely!
We have asked the marina if they would be willing to receive some packages for us. So, there’s a bunch of stuff waiting for us.
One of which is a new sanding machine. Yay! The Festool 150mm sander was one of our last machines that had a cord. All other machines have been replaced by battery powered types over the years. This sander is new on the market and as soon as Wim saw it, he had to order it 😄. It is so much more convenient without that annoying cord. And the machine is smaller and lighter than the old one, with the same power.
As usual, if something comes on board, something has to go out… or else we eventually would sink.
So, we position the old sanding machine in a prominent place at the recycling area. Hoping that it will appeal to somebody and it can have a second life.
It has been on duty for 35 years and it sanded all surfaces entirely, inside and outside, above the waterline and under the waterline, on Dione IV many times, was overhauled 15 years ago and it needs new carbon brushes now. That’s how Wim found out about the new battery powered machine, he was looking for carbon brushes on the website of the Spanish Festool distributor.
June 11.
A scooter ride to Boiro and along the bay of Boiro.
So, the right lane is for girls and the left, opposite, lane for boys. Hm, boys and girls can’t go in the same direction here 🤔
Luckily, our scooters Thelma & Louise are both girls! So, we can drive in the same direction 😄
When we pass the town of Boiro we get on to a very scenic small road that goes all along the coast to Ribeira. And even further, to Fisterra. The small villages are lovely and the views over the bay are stunning. It reminds us of Cinque Terre in Italy. But without tourists! Too bad it gets cloudy, very windy and there’s a forecast for rain later in the afternoon. We decide to turn around and have a lunch in a small restaurant. But we certainly have to come back here.
June 12.
Today, there’s drizzle and a lot of wind. A day to stay inside.
Sher does some sewing and Wim installs energy monitors for the fridge and the freezer.
These little displays measure the voltage and the current from the compressors and calculate the amount of energy (in Wh) that the compressors take.
Now we can determine how much energy the refrigerating takes. Especially when it gets hotter we have to determine whether it still makes sense to use the freezer, for instance.
June 13.
Again a lot of wind rain today. We even plug in shore power! That’s a long time ago. Our battery bank has gone down to 70% since we didn’t have much sun the last few days and we want to do 2 loads of laundry and use the tumble dryer.
When we tested the shortwave radio lately, the remote control of the transmitter didn’t work. We discovered that one of the plugs at the rear of the Pactor modem had been pulled out. Hm. The modem is not fixed and had probably been shifting when we rolled heavily at sea. So, Wim makes a strap over it to hold it firmly to the desk.
And thus, the bears have a firm seat! 😄
In the meantime, Sher finished her sewing project: a lovely top 🤩
June 14.
After Sher does some provisioning, we leave Cabo de Cruz and head to the mooring spot in the bay of Illa de Arousa where we have been before. We love that place.
But first, we are to bunker some diesel. This seems like a good opportunity: it’s a gas station used by cars, trucks and fishing vessels. They have a big flow so the price is very good (€ 1,299/L) and the diesel is fresh (meaning it didn’t stay in a warm tank for months, like in a marina). We decide to get the diesel now because for sure, the price will increase dramatically because of the fact that Israel started a war against Iran.
We top up our starboard main diesel tank. The port tank is still full with the good mineral stuff from Jersey. We tank 209L. That’s what we have used since Santander.
We made a nice curly loop to the gas station 😀
After that, we head to Illa de Arousa and pick up one of these big mooring balls. This time, we pick one which is a bit closer to the village. At a depth of 3m at low tide.
Lovely spot!
We inflate the dinghy and fit the new cover for the floor. It looks really good!
Sher found white asparagus in Boiro. But they are awful! Thready and bitter. We use only the tops for a pasta salad and the rest goes over board.
But the seagulls like it! 😄
June 16.
The weather is gorgeous. Sunny, warm (30ºC) and a little breeze. Wim pulls on his wet suit (the sea temperature is 17ºC) and dives with the Hookah to clean the hull. Hm. The visibility is quite poor under water. This is being caused by the sediment that flows from the rivers into the Ria. So he decides to clean the prop only. We noticed that our speed has dropped from 5 to 4 knots at 1200 revs recently and we’re using 3.5L/h diesel instead of 2.8L/h. There’s a lot of thin green weed on the prop so Wim starts scrubbing with the electric scrubber. But it’s hard to get it off. Let’s try a steel brush. Now, the weed goes but then he discovers that under there is a layer of little white barnacles. This is ugly, this causes a huge decrease in efficiency of the prop. The barnacles are too though to remove with the steel brush so he takes a steel putty knife. That does the job. Clouds of white limestone stuff fly off. Finishing touch with a piece of ScotchBrite. After half an hour the prop is shining like new!
After that, he scrubs the waterline until arm-length depth with the ScotchBrite pad on the electric scrubber. The waterline itself looks very good: there is only very little thin green weed hairs that disappear easily so he focuses at the surface deeper under water. After one and a half hour the scrubber’s battery is empty but all the waterline has been done. A wash down with the deck shower, a shower inside and a nice warm-up / siesta in the sun on the fore deck complete this afternoon 😊
For dinner, we make Quinoa “cookies”. Sher found fresh thyme this morning, which is quite rare here. So, this is an opportunity to have one of our favorite meals!
We bought a local wine on the street market in town. €5,- No label. So, this will be a surprise… This is such a nice and gentle merchant guy, selling delicious local cheeses and bread. And he gives you huge samples of things to try, so you don’t walk away hungry at all!
Yay! Happy!
With yogurt sauce (with a lot of raw garlic 😅) and wild spinach cooked in garlic. Delicious!!!!
The dinner is super delicious.
The wine is a bit disappointing. Well, that merchant guy is so good in making cheese and bread, maybe it was a bit opportunistic to think that he is good in making wine, too 😏
June 17.
A warm day. This is the forecast we see in the morning for 5 o’clock in the afternoon.
Will it really be 36ºC??
Yes, it will!
At 3 o’clock.
Even more…
In the afternoon, there’s no wind at all and it feels really hot. We decide to do a dinghy tour. Maybe we’ll see some dolphins. We have seen dolphins here in the bay twice and perhaps we’ll see them outside. Apart from that, it nice cool in the dinghy planing over the flat sea at 12 knots of speed. We go to the little island Illote Guidoiro Areoso, 2 sea miles SW of our mooring. It has gorgeous white sandy beaches. It’s prohibited to land with a boat and we have to stay outside the yellow buoys but the view is “Caribbean”!
We don’t see dolphins and by the end of the afternoon we slowly get back en do some provisioning in the Froiz supermarket in town.
Back on board, there’s a job for the professional organizer on Dione IV 😀
We have decided to use our freezer box as a second fridge. Since we have the energy meters for the the fridge and the freezer we have noticed that the little (29L) freezer uses 3x more energy than than the big (92L) fridge box! Well, we don’t really have much that has to stay deep frozen so we decide to set the temperature to 7ºC instead of -15ºC and store some stuff in there that is less frequently used. That gives us more space in the big fridge and it should save a lot of energy. Not that we are short on energy… 😄 we have a 100% full battery bank every day in around noon and we are not sparingly on electricity. But, that could change. Maybe more cloudy days or shorter daylight, you never know…
So, turn up the thermostat to +7º
And completely fill the box with cheese, yogurt, and fill it up with Estrella Galicia 🍺
June 18.
Another warm day. Excellent for some paint work. Last week, Wim has put primer on a number of small rusty or damaged spots (all the little spots marked by blue tape), yesterday he has been sanding these spots and today we can paint with high gloss paint. We use ‘Perfection Pro’, Snow White, from International. The best quality available. It’s a 2-component epoxy paint but it cures actually a bit too slow for outside painting: it takes 2 days to cure at 20ºC. The tricky part is that at night moisture gets in the paint and destroys the gloss. But at 30ºC it should be just enough cured in the evening to prevent moisture getting into it.
We have some extra paint mixed so that’s a nice opportunity for Sher to pick up a job that was left from our big paint job in the hall in the Netherlands a year ago: finishing the edges of the vinyl in the cockpit with a tiny brush.
Precision work!
The weather keeps surprising us. Around noon, it gets cloudy and we get get a cool (22ºC), 20 knots wind from the south. From the ocean. Generating wind waves because the bay is open to the south. So, Dione IV starts rocking and Sher can’t do her precision work any more. Wim bakes a cake with some of the Cranberries that were in the freezer and Sher does some sewing.
June 19.
At the end of the morning we leave the mooring buoy.
And head back to the marina of Cabo de Cruz. We have some packages waiting there for us.
There’s no wind so Mighty Mitsu pushes us to Cabo de Cruz in an hour. We can see the result of the prop cleaning: at 1200 revs, we go from 3,5/h to 2.8L/h diesel and from 4 knots to 5 knots boat speed!
A colorful lunch!
With Marcia, from the boat ‘Bird song”.
June 20.
While Sher goes with Marcia into Boiro by bus to do some shopping, Wim tries to clean the vinyl in the cockpit. After some experimenting he finds out that the scrubbing paste that Ingo (from the boat Antares) gave us, works really good.
The electric underwater scrubber gets a new purpose 😄
This industrial vinyl has excellent anti-skid properties and therefore it has a very rough surface. But this rough surface takes and holds dirt easily and is pretty hard to clean. Just water and soap on a sponge doesn’t work. In cold climate, in winter, it got a lot of green algae that had to be removed with the high pressure cleaner.
The result is great! 🪩
Thank you very much, Ingo!
After lunch, we depart from Cabo de Cruz. Tomorrow is the summer solstice and we want to celebrate that with a nice view at the sunrise or sunset on an anchorage.
In the bay at the north side of the island A Illa de Arousa we pick up a big mooring buoy. Our tactic for picking up mooring buoys hasn’t changed: Wim maneuvers Dione IV carefully alongside the buoy, midships (here the side deck is low), and Sher gets the line through the eye, lying on her belly on the side deck. Then, Wim pulls Dione IV backwards and Sher walks the line to the fore deck.
After she has temporally fixed the line on the bollards, Wim goes to the buoy with the dinghy and we fix two lines.
This will be a lovely view at the sunrise, tomorrow morning!
June 21.
We set the alarm at 7 o’clock, sunrise time. Bummer! it’s cloudy. But, then the sun peeks through a small gap in the clouds and we take some nice pictures while we kiss and wish each other a joyful summer 🥰
This is the card we send to family and friends:
It’s a day with light clouds, 26ºC and 15 knots of wind from the south west.
Sher has started a new sewing project: a mosquito screen for the companionway hatch. Wim works on an update of this website.
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