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| 21 July 2010
The distance from Sotogrande, far south in Spain and up to Empuriabrava, located about 40 km from the border to France, is both long and exposed to bad weather. Since the agreement was to get the boat on land no later than Monday 19th of July, we felt that our nice and calm boat trip became a kind of speed cruising instead of the trip that we wanted in our own pace.
We had many different experiences along the way, but for my part, like the one writing the blog, I had barely collected my thoughts before the moorings were released the next morning and we were again at sea on the way towards the next port.
I must say, that the experience was truly of varying characters; everything from almost fire in one of the GPMs south of Cartagena, rescue mission at Mar Menor in La Manga and not to forget the celebration in Morayra of Spain’s historic football gold in the World Cup.
So as you can see, there are many things I would like to write about but have not had the time to do.
Perhaps it will be a book?
We are now in Empuriabrava, 40 km south of the French border, and Zenith has to be taken up from the water because of necessary repairs and a thorough overhaul.
There is quite a lot work to be done, and the Windy dealer on-site estimates that it will take up to 10 working days before the boat can be put on the water again, almost 2 weeks where we have to set our holidays on a hold.
This wasn’t quite what we had in mind when we left the quay 20th of June, and if I had understood that we almost had to "speed cruise" along the Spanish coast to manage to have the boat ashore in Empuriabrava before the Spanish holidays began in August, I think I would have had some second thoughts.
We have to admit that we have had a lot of problems with the boat since the beginning of our small adventure, problems that we continuously have had since we picked her up in Västervik in 2008.
I have no idea anymore of how much time the captain has spent on all these problems and repairs; he has sent loads of mails, taken an countless number of phone calls to Windy, Reymarine or others, spent hours, making days, waiting for various technicians to show up, and not to forget; all the time spent being present on board while the work actually has to be done on board.
Every boat owner knows that there is nothing like a boat without any problems at all, but in our case the problems are far beyond what one can expect when you actually buy a brand new boat.
We have clearly our own theories regarding all the problems, small or large, but we leave it up to Windy making their own conclusion.
Many of the issues on board could clearly been avoided as we see it if the different production lines at the manufacturer place had a higher degree of quality checks while the boat was built.
We have also had some problems of greater concern which we felt became a threat to our personal security on board, as when one of the GPM units (a kind of boat's digital brain) almost caught fire, and we had meltdown of electric wires onboard. This resulted in losing one of our digital maps, but also in losing our VHF, our “phone line” at sea.
I can assure you that it is not a good feeling when it starts to smell burnt electricity or the smell of burnt rubber when you are far out at sea, and especially not when you also can see smoke coming out between the plates in the ceiling, the place where you know that all electrical connections and components to the steering position and the boat's map systems are located.
We quickly experienced how important it actually is to always be prepared regarding emergency procedures on board, if we where forced to leave the boat in a hurry.
We felt this situation both serious ant threatening for the both of us.
There should be no doubt that if the captain on board had had not been as handy and practical as he is; we had possibly still been in Morocco or in best case, somewhere along the Spanish coast.
We had never managed it all the way up here without his technical skills. Guaranteed!
In a few hours we will meet a representative from Windy here in Empuriabrava, trying to explain all the issues and problems we have with the boat, before they take her ashore.
It is not easy to leave Zenith when we feel that we should have been out at sea instead of sitting on a plane on our way to Norway.
Sadly enough this is the situation right now, and nothing we can do about. Sometimes such just happens.
See you in two weeks, when Zenith is back in the water!
Tone and Geirr
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