Mid June- The last day of September 2024
And so, it came to be that we spent the three hottest months of the year between two castles, on a river bordering Portugal and Spain. I’d heard of the ‘Guadiana glue’ from other sailors, actually before we even left Germany, at my bar job in Kappeln. A man heard the plan with the boat, and told me all the hippies go there. Thats not strictly true, but we definitely met a few, and contrubuted to the rumours by our own colourful, naked swimming, chard growing, harmonica playing presence.
Through harvesting grapes and figs, rescuing a sinking sailboat, dog-sitting, printing T-shirts and singing songs at the beach bar we found a community of people, with all kinds of stories of how they ended up here.
In early August, my family rocked and rolled down to river in their silver camper, where they got stuck at the bottom of a steep dirt track for the duration of their stay.
By total chance, childhood friends of ours were renting a house on the rivers edge, and we spent two weeks in 40 degree heat playing Cambio, swimming, sailing, drinking Tinto de Verano and listening to 90s disco. Niels developed a passion for making pool LEDs, I decorated everyone’s clothes with colourful drawings, and we managed to get 12 people on the boat and sail to town, multiple times.
Atlanta was anchored near a lopsided pontoon, a strange yellow catamaran towed alongside in the current. ‘That’s our strange yellow catamaran!” Freja interjected as I was rather unkindly describing it to someone at the table. She had become a good friend of ours and had introduced me to the Tuesday music nights on the Portuguese side.
These were our neighbours who had invited us to join in the wine harvest. 1/3 of a tonne of grapes where picked in the early morning, with many a tea break, making 320 bottles of wine.
Niels juiced several buckets for ourselves, and was up all night making syrups and jams until the gas ran out.
The dry dirt path leading to the river was incredibly spikey, and the home to hundreds of spiders who’s eyes reflected back at us in the torchlight. It was during this time that Niels had an enormous centipede crawl up his top and bite his neck. I’ve never been more grateful to live far away on the water than that night, however some creatures did make it onboard, a hitchhiking praying mantis on the sail cover for example, and also, an aphid colony.
Fig trees hung low to the ground, heavy with green, yellow and purple fruit, exploding with red from the inside. Full of sunshine and smelling bizarrely of coconuts. After picking as many as could fill our t-shirts, we cut, and lay them out to dry under the hot Spanish sun, to be baked into bread, or sprinkled on salads and porridge.
Allot of preparation for the coming journey was discussed, and many many parcels of ropes, tools, lifejackets, screws and aluminium poles arrived in the local village.
We then spent the next day’s wondering around the sleepy neighbourhood asking if anyone had seen our post, or knew a woman called Estefania who may, or may not have the parcels.
We even chased a poor postman who was trying to explain that this was actually his home and he was off work…
In September, Christian offered us his finca, workshop, and dog for a week, and the whole project of dismantling the wind steering began, and is still ongoing.
There were plenty more jobs, sanding and revarnishing the benches in the cockpit, fixing the “schiebeluckgarage” which was leaking saltwater into the bed, splicing new ropes, sewing a dingy cover and building a new computer and screen into the boat for our open source maps.
Bella arrived in mid-September for a few days before she had enough and went to Lisbon, thankfully only for a week. It was still incredibly hot during this time, and paint would dry too quickly leaving streaks and lumps in the paintbrushes wake which was deeply frustrating.
These jobs had to be completed first thing in the morning because working with a headtorch attracted a flurry of flies that darted around directly Infront of your face, and then stuck in the paint, only to be sanded off the following day. There was of course always time to swim and read and paint, all of lifes really important things…
Between two windmills and two castles,
Paddle splash and turtle startles,
Muddy river sings a song,
autumn comes and we’ll be gone,
On blue boat full of rascals
Exchanging/refilling our gas bottle was complicated, as nowhere seemed to have a 6 kilo replacement. One morning Bella and I hitched off on an 8 hour round-trip in what must be the worst place to catch a lift in Europe, sat boiling on the roadside of an industrail estate in the back-end of nowhere.
Just before dark, on a dual carriage way sadly eyeing up the already ‘ant hollowed out’ pomegranates, we got a lift home, and with a contact in the North of Spain if Bella was interested in marrying him.
Finally on the 28th September we hoisted the muddy anchor, and slipped into saltier, clearer water.
The rocky hills grew flatter, widening into open land, and bridges and roads, a far cry from the cosy valley life that had cradled us for the last months.
The night we arrived at the coast, Tobi from the North of Germany joined the crew, at 1am.
On first arrival back down in Villa Real, we attempted tying the boat onto a half sunken ferry in the fishing harbour as recomended by a friend, but it was dark and creepy with its empty windows and waterlogged decks- and suddenly the water depth was showing at 1m 40, our keel is 160. The escape was very slow as the keel was sliding through the mud and silt and sludge that the harbour had been collecting over the years, and after that it was decided not to do any more experimental shenanigans before our departure.
I left to sell my t-shirts and bags at an artisan market with a friend, and returned to find the boat had been sent away by the Guardia Civil as she’d been anchored in a shipping lane, but was now resting very happy at the bottom of a 5 metre wall which I had to climb with my guitar and all my wares. If I though that was bad, the following day we brought about 50 kilos of food down that ladder in 30 degree heat.
It was always going to be spontaneous the day we decided to cross the 600 miles of water between mainland Europe and the first Canary Islands, but the decision still felt like a surprise when it happened.
Sat in the cockpit eating pasta, Niels says we have to leave tomorrow, or wait several weeks for the next window. A long list of necessities was drawn up and only partially ticked off by the time we’d motored out of the rivers mouth, and towards Africa. The most frustrating of which, was the job of returning our new anchor chain that had many factory faults in the zinc coating… it had cost 500€ and wasnt the sort of thing we could ignore. After dark we quickly slipped into the marina, filled up on water, loaded it into a shopping trolley and rolled it back to the shop, the 5 of us running with the trolley to get it up the last ramp.
Pizza rolls had been baked, but not all of the lids in the cockpit had a buckle to secure them in bad weather. Lifelines now had hoops to click into, but the bloody “Schiebelukgarage” had to be taped around so as not to leak into the cabin. Despite the lack of sleep and general feeling of wishing there was more time, we set off in the bright sunshine in good spirits, with a kilo of crispy corns in the grab bag, a great weather forecast, and for the first time- our new satellite messenger to send and receive updates from land.
There’s no boat track this time, instead- a song from the Guadiana-
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