In 2003 we sold our house, and gave up our jobs to embark on a new life on a boat. We have been living aboard a boat for 8 months now. We are now looking for a new home in the south of Spain where we will live having sold Stargazer and start a new chapter in our life. We take a big break from the boat and do a concert tour in the UK…! Well why not…?
Friday 2nd January 2004 – Port Vell, Barcelona – Day 93
A rather quiet start to the new year. Drinks with Jack and Tan, the boat light winners, on their boat. Very nice.
Saturday 3rd January 2004 – Port Vell, Barcelona – Day 94
Drinks today on Magellan cloud. It’s Steve’s birthday today there are 20 people on a 30 foot boat!! The boat is listing somewhat and sits 4 inches below the normal waterline. We do the short pootle from our boat and arrived by dinghy for the novelty of it, but when we come to leave, we find that 10m out we run out of fuel, much to the amusement of the rest of the guests. We have to now row to our boat.
Sunday 4th January 2004 – Port Vell, Barcelona – Day 95
Like everybody at New Year we decide that we should get fit and healthy, and do exercise, so we have a nice long walk along the beach followed by a bike ride.
We try to get into the Picasso Museum in the centre of town. It’s free today, but everyone else has the same idea, it’s packed so we decide to wait and go another day.
Monday 5th January 2004 – Port Vell, Barcelona – Day 96
Hayley is getting her haircut today, at last.
We go out for another bike ride today. Our favourite restaurant, the Bombeta is not doing a cheap menu today and it’s a holiday here. so we try a different one which is next to our regular Japanese restaurant. It was very good and very cheap Tonight it’s the Kings Day Parade. Tradition has it that the Three Kings arrive by boat, they give a speech, and are giving the keys to the city so they can deliver all the presents. They are then driven to the park where they start the parade, which goes all the way up to Montjuic hill.
What a great parade, full of mechanical animals and fabulous creatures with people throwing sweets from the floats for everyone to catch. A bright, colourful event. We all got some sweets.
We finish the night off with a kebab, the first in many years! Del manages to keep his down! These’s a story there somewhere…
Tuesday 6th January 2004 – Port Vell, Barcelona – Day 97
It’s Kings Day here today, so everything is closed…!
Wednesday 7th January 2004 – Port Vell, Barcelona – Day 98
Lunch out to day in town with our good friends Karen, Paul, Jack and Tan.
Thursday 8th January 2004 – Port Vell, Barcelona – Day 99
Spanish lessons today. We get to try different sweets in the lesson, but blindfolded. We have to describe the taste of them in Spanish.
Friday 9th January 2004 – Port Vell, Barcelona – Day 100
We went to the cinema today to see Master and Commander. Quite gruesome in parts. What those sailors had to put up with. Nice cinema. Very clean with no ‘odd‘ smells. Our cinema back in Harrow, a Warner Brothers cinema could learn something from here.
Saturday 10th January 2004 – Port Vell, Barcelona – Day 101
We were planning to finally take the boat out on a trip to another marina. We have been in Barcelna now for 100 days, and all we have done is local sails just outside the marina. We have forgotten how to sail properly.
Our plan is to go to Sitges, just south of Barcelona, but we get up too late and we’re not very prepared, so we will postpone it until tomorrow. Also the wind is a force 6 early this morning.
We still take the boat out for a potter. It’s a beautiful day, warm enough for us to put on our shorts and go barefoot around the boat. It’s January!
The sea is flat and we manage a sedate sail south.
We notice that we have a visitor. There is long ‘fin thing’ which is trailing behind the boat and stays there with us, not moving. Finally a long fish thing emerges which is 75 cm long, upside down, and showing a rather showing a large sucker, which is its mouth. He spits water out at. We both yell out! There are some strange beasts at sea…
Sunday 11th January 2004 – Port Vell to Aiguadolc (Sitges) 19 miles, 26 euros
Today we are finally getting away from Barcelona for a few days. We have a sailing boat so let’s go somewhere…
The weather is beautiful, so we get ready for our little two day escape from Barcelona. We get a good wind for most of the way, and Stargazer peaks at 6.5 knots, not bad. We have to get used to this ‘tippy uppy’ thing again that boats do. It’s been a while.
We arrive at three in the afternoon. The marina is lovely, a great place to be in the summer no doubt. It’s a bit like Lavendou in France with restaurants lining the quay.
We walk into the town up and over a bit of a hill and find it too is lovely. A grand palm tree lined promenade with a nice beach. We will come back tomorrow for a better look around and to have dinner. We feed the ducks.
Dinner tonight is Green Thai curry. Very nice.
Monday 12th January 2004 – Sitges – Day 2
Even though it was very peaceful here last night in Sitges, Hayley didn’t sleep very much.
The boat rigging was making some noise against the mast, and there are of course the ducks!
After a leisurely breakfast we walk into town past ‘Cat Square‘, there are lots of them. We have a couple of very expensive drinks by the sea, it’s a nice sunny day, just a little cool, it is January.
We have a cheap menu of the day in town and stagger back for a nap in the afternoon, which is rudely disturbed when we feel the back of boat hitting the concrete pontoon, so we let out the boat lines a little to create a larger gap between us and the pontoon, to stop it happening.
Dinner is a takeout pizza after much difficulty trying to getting H back on the boat as there is now a large gap.
During the night the wind starts to build. We are hoping to leave and go back to Barcelona tomorrow.
Tuesday 13th January 2004 – Sitges – Day 3
Today we wake up to a wind which is force 7, the cleats are creaking and groaning as we are in a very unprotected spot in the marina. The wind is hitting our starboard bow full-on. It looks like we will be staying here today, so we take advantage of the wind and do some washing, clean and air the boat. We spend some quite time and read.
Later we shop in town, and on the way back we pop in to the marina office to pay for our stay. We thought it was €13 a night, but we had read it wrong, it’s €26 and we are here for a few days. No idea how we got that so wrong.
We must get off from here tomorrow, but the forecast isn’t good. What a rip-off for a winter birth.
Dinner is Spanish stew
Wednesday 14th January 2004 – Sitges to Port Vell, Barcelona 19 miles
H wakes up at 8:30, and there is no wind so she gives Del a nudge and within 10 minutes we have cast off and are leaving.
There is a bit of a swell but things are okay, so we motor all the way back to Barcelona. En route we have some fried egg sandwiches and tea. The wind has now completely gone until we’re near Barcelona. We’re at the entrance. It’s now a force 6.
We decide to go bow in, but the wind gets us and we end up floundering in the channel. 2nd attempt we make it. Just.
Tuesday 27th January 2004 – Port Vell, Barcelona – Day 118
We have a friend on our pontoon today, a heron, we call him Harry. He stands about on the end of the pontoon, and sometimes wanders down the fingers of the pontoon where, if you frighten him, he runs at you to takeoff. It’s quite frightening. We’ve tried to give him pieces of bread but he’s not having any of it.
Wednesday 28th January 2004 – Port Vell, Barcelona – Day 119
30 of us are heading off to the archery bar today where we take over all four lanes. Our team wins. I have the highest female score despite much protesting from Paul about bouncing arrows…?!
Thursday 29th January 2004 – Port Vell, Barcelona – Day 120
It’s Karen’s birthday today, so after Spanish lessons we take her her present and head out to the Cava bar.
Jackie, Steve and Emily from Magellan Cloud come too. After much cava we decide that it’s such a lovely day we should all have a game of Pétanque. There’s a couple of pétanque courts in the central reservation of a large road nearby. We bring the balls, Paul and Karen bring the Ricard. It’s a lovely two hours spent in the Sun drinking and playing games while the rush hour traffic speeds by.
We think we might have another toilet situation…
Friday 30th January 2004 – Port Vell, Barcelona – Day 121
Yes we have another blocked toilet situation, we thought that we had a problem last night. We now have raw sewage in the bilges.
What a stink…!!!! We did what we could last night, but it was dark and we both had headaches after all the drink during the day.
Today we have to tackle it. We empty the cockpit locker and flush the bilges with hundreds of litres of water and Milton. Slowly the smell is going away and we end up with the cleanest bilges on the marina.
Saturday 31st January 2004 – Port Vell, Barcelona – Day 122
Del flies to the UK today, when he calls in he says it’s grim, dirty and that nothing works, and that really we’ve made the right decision to leave.
Friday 13th February 2004
There are a few gaps here in the diary. We have started house hunting in the south of Spain.
We are flying back to Barcelona from Malaga.
It’s Friday the 13th and we are on Iberia flight number 666…!!!!
We are both going back to the UK for a few months to do tour with The Shadows to do their Final Tour.
The tour is a long one. Del is the Lighting Designer and H is coming along to work on the tour as a follow spot operator. Should be interesting…
Friday April 30th Scarborough
Well here we are in the Scarborough Futurist Theatre for the opening night of The Shadows Final Tour. H is doing one of the spotlights and has had a brief training from Del and has been coached in what will happen in each song including a rather complicated ‘Shazam’ which requires quick fades up and down on various band members. H is a little nervous.
The show starts and all goes well. H has a drum solo to pick up, it’s after about 5 minutes of gripping the light tight with white knuckles so it doesn’t move, that Del informs her that it’s an 8 minute long solo and she could have just locked the light off. Thanks Del.
Monday 14th June 2004
It’s the last day of the tour in the London Palladium. Cliff Richard joins The Shadows on stage for the last show. Fantastic…
Del has done a great show that has gone down very well and H is now a partly experienced follow spot operator.
Tuesday 15th June 2004 London to Manchester
Flight from London to Manchester.
Wednesday 16th June 2004 Manchester to Malaga
House hunting in the south of Spain continues…
Friday 18th June 2004
We think that we have finally found our house in Spain. We make an offer…
Wednesday 30th June 2004 Malaga to Manchester
Our offer has been accepted and we have signed the reservation contract today. We plan to fly back to our boat in Barcelona at the end of July. We think…
This is the first year of a diary that H wrote in here spare time. Yes there are lots of gaps, she did her best. The pencil writing is starting to fade 23 years in, so it was important that we memorialised our first year in Spain.
We have enjoyed our first year in Spain on our boat. Going forward the plan is to sell “Stargazer” and buy a house in Spain, and from there commute to and from Spain to work. We have become very attached to the boat and the boat life, and maybe we we have to come up with a new plan?
Welcome back, we get to spend summer with you, see you soon xx