Tom
November 16, 2009, Port Ginesta

This is worth mentioning in my blog. Recently, a new society of pleasure boaters was founded in Spain. Its objectives are the promotion and protection of Spanish sailors, in particular in our continuous war against the absurd bureaucratic legislation. Of course, I joined this club.
www.anavre.org

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Tom
July 4, 2009, Garraf

Just to show this blog isn't dead, a picture of one of our frequent weekend sails. This one was with friends Gema and Dani. We had a great time swimming at anchor in front of the rocky Garraf coast.

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Tom
June 1, 2009, Port Ginesta

Improvements on Iris continue slowly but steady. The extremely violent gail storm of January 24th had ripped apart the mainsail cover, and now, more than 4 months later, Iris finally got a brand new one. I've opted for a handy lazy jacks setup, which was professionaly tailored by Mila-Mar. Great job, Milagros! At the same time I had her make me a new and bigger sprayhood.
Some pictures:

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Tom
March 27, 2009, Port Ginesta

Because of the installation of the new engine Iris had to pass again the feared Spanish boat inspection and since its last inspection 4 years ago legislation has changed a bit. For example, it is now obligatory to carry a VHF radio with DSC (Digital Selective Call). Hurray! Iris has one of these. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be enough. Although for Iris's navigation zone 4 (12 miles from coast) a GPS isn't an obligatory piece of security equipment, I was kindly obliged to buy a new homologated GPS, in order for the VHF-DSC to be able to be fully operational. The radio WAS already connected to my good old Valsat GPS and the combination worked perfectly, but of course that good old Valsat isn't equipment homologated by the Spanish Marine. So I searched a bit on eBay and bought a brand new Humminbird 785 c2 chart plotter with external antenna. Could have installed it myself in less than half an hour, but of course Spanish Marine obliges to hire an expensive authorized installer to do the job. Grrrrrrrrr.

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Tom
October 19, 2008, Port Ginesta

On Friday afternoon I went over to Sitges to do final tests of the new engine together with the mechanics of Náutica Emilio. Wow, what a difference! The silent, vibrationless 30-horsepower engine gave Iris an easy 8 knot over a smooth sea.
The idea was to bring Iris back home to Port Ginesta on Saturday but that turned out to be a rainy day and we decided to postpone the first trip with the new engine for one day. Finally yesterday Moona and I took Iris back to her hailing port. There was a strong wind blowing directly in our face, and a moderate sea with 2m waves. With the old engine I would have desisted doing the trip because it would have been too hard for the old Volvo 2002. But the new D1-30 had no problems riding the waves. The log indicated 6.5 knots, 1.5 of which probably corresponded to the counter current. We did the 5 Nm in just about an hour.

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