The Tomlin-Davies Crew on Annalee

Vessel Name: Annalee
Vessel Make/Model: Hallberg Rassy HR43
Crew: Si, Mel, Will & Millie
06 August 2019 | Bruges
05 August 2019 | Mercator Marina Ostend
24 August 2017 | Bay of Roses
20 August 2017 | Golfe de Juan
14 August 2017 | Anse de Cavaliere
12 August 2017 | Playa Guilloia
09 August 2017 | Roses
08 August 2017 | Palamos
07 August 2017 | Costa Dorada
Recent Blog Posts
06 August 2019 | Bruges

Bruges

We planned on spending a day relaxing before the next two legs of the trip, so had a leisurely breakfast and took the train to Bruges. What a picturesque place it is, we walked around exploring picture postcard streets and had lunch at a place called Books & Brunch. They stocked lots of books in all [...]

05 August 2019 | Mercator Marina Ostend

Day 1 Dover to Ostend

We arrived in Dover late on Sunday evening having cheered Millie through the 200m Backstroke finals at Sheffield in the late afternoon. A dash down the M1 in torrential rain followed by a quick pit-stop at home to collect Will and the stuff we needed for the boat and we were once again on our way southwards. We [...]

24 August 2017 | Bay of Roses

Back to Spain

We finally managed to get away from Golfe de Juan. It was a really nice place but it wasn't part of the plan to spend so long there!

20 August 2017 | Golfe de Juan

Stuck in Golfe de Juan (or the black hole)

There has been no blog post for a few days as we've had, what seems like an escalating set of problems that needed sorting. On our way to Golfe de Juan - for what was planned to be a one-night stopover to refuel, water and visit the international fireworks display in Cannes - we experienced more engine [...]

14 August 2017 | Anse de Cavaliere

Finally in France

We managed to finally get over to France in a weather window. Leaving NE Spain on Sunday morning, we sailed until 23:30 to reach a town called La Ciotat which has a marina and a large bay, in which we anchored.

12 August 2017 | Playa Guilloia

Playa Gulloia

On Friday we moved from Roses to Cadaqués in windy conditions again -although thankfully the sea was smooth as the wind was gusting from the land and we were hugging the coast line. It was a relatively short journey of about three hours and we picked up a mooring buoy off the very picturesque town [...]

Bruges

06 August 2019 | Bruges
Simon Davies | Fair
We planned on spending a day relaxing before the next two legs of the trip, so had a leisurely breakfast and took the train to Bruges. What a picturesque place it is, we walked around exploring picture postcard streets and had lunch at a place called Books & Brunch. They stocked lots of books in all languages and served really good food - sandwiches/toasties/salads. After a nice meal and sev rap book purchases we decided to jump thoroughly on the tourist bandwagon and took a boat tour of the city's canals. Afterwards we felt in need of an energy boost for the walk back to the station and train back to Ostend so ordered some waffles - which seemed to come in several forms -all covered in sugar, cream and ice cream - with the option of more cream/chocolate sauces in case the sugar hit wasn't big enough. We got back on board and slept it all off in preparation for an early start for the next leg of our trip northwards towards Amsterdam.

Day 1 Dover to Ostend

05 August 2019 | Mercator Marina Ostend
Simon Davies | Wind: SSW5-6; Part Cloudy; Sea: 1.8m waves; visibility: good
We arrived in Dover late on Sunday evening having cheered Millie through the 200m Backstroke finals at Sheffield in the late afternoon. A dash down the M1 in torrential rain followed by a quick pit-stop at home to collect Will and the stuff we needed for the boat and we were once again on our way southwards.

We finally arrived at 23:30 and after stowing everything, decided to exit the basin we were in. It has a lock gate as the tides at Dover are pretty big and only opens for 1 ½ hours either side of high water. We wanted/needed to depart early on Monday morning to catch the tide and get ahead of some heavy winds, and of course High Water times weren't kind. We waited until 01:00 for there to be enough water to open the gates and went through to tie up on a waiting pontoon overnight.

Monday morning dawned grey and with what we sailors call a "fresh breeze" (ie a lot of wind!). We radioed the Dover Port Control for permission to depart - its the business port in the UK and the straits of Dover is the busiest shipping lanes in the world - so it's all run a bit like air traffic control with everything monitored by radar and radio communications. We headed to our crossing point to cut across the shipping lanes at right angles (think M25 at rush hour) and the skipper was very glad of the recently upgraded chart plotter/radar/AIS. The AIS sends a squawk with the vessels details and allows you to track position, heading and speed as well as contact information to radio directly to the vessel. More importantly it means that our relatively small boat can be seen by the bigger ones!

As we crossed the shipping lanes, the wind and seas increased so we were bowling along at 30 degrees heel and the items that hadn't been fully stowed were mixed thoroughly in a tumble-dryer style cabin. The good news, however was that we made incredible speed and were over almost twice as quickly as the Skipper had planned for. We turned left outside Calais and headed up the coast past Dunkirk and Nieuwpoort to Ostend, finally arriving and entering the Mercator Marina in the heart of the city, through a lock and 2 lifting road bridges.

Mel heated up a most welcome spaghetti bolognese that had been pre-prepared and the crew tucked in with gusto after our first leg.

Back to Spain

24 August 2017 | Bay of Roses
Skipper, NE 4, pt. Cloudy, slight sea
We finally managed to get away from Golfe de Juan. It was a really nice place but it wasn't part of the plan to spend so long there!

We sailed into o a bay next to St Tropez. It was a nice quiet spot, tucked just around the corner. After food, we took the dinghy into the town itself ( see picture album). The next morning we made an early start - 06:00 to put in a longish sail westwards towards the Calanques to the east of Marseille. These are spectacular limestone cliffs with fissures and bays eroded into them and we found a very pleasant one called Sormiou. There was paddle boarding and Mel even made it ashore for her walk to keep that step count up!

The original plan had been to spend a few days pottering along the Calanques before heading back across the Bay De Lion but the enforced lay up and the weather put paid to that plan. Looking at the forecasts there was a small weather window before some more bad weather was due to set in across the bay ( by 'weather window' I mean merely very windy rather than extremely windy). We set off at 05:00 the next day to make the 17 1/2 hour crossing into increasing wind and seas. We arrived to NE Spain about 22:30 and were anchored by 23:00. The crossing was not too bad we had a maximum of 27kt winds but some very lumpy seas for the last 3 hours.

After a night's rest (interrupted by a heavy downpour at about 05:00 - which lead to a scramble to shut hatches and windows) we set off at 10:30 back south to get out of the way of the impending heavy weather up around the NE cape. It's an area that deserves its fearsome reputation, we found that the wind was consistently much higher that the forecast around the cape as were the seas. Not somewhere I'd be in a hurry to return to!

Hopefully a couple of days easy sailing with short hops between anchorages towards Barcelona.

Stuck in Golfe de Juan (or the black hole)

20 August 2017 | Golfe de Juan
Skipper - sunny put cloudy 35 deg
There has been no blog post for a few days as we've had, what seems like an escalating set of problems that needed sorting. On our way to Golfe de Juan - for what was planned to be a one-night stopover to refuel, water and visit the international fireworks display in Cannes - we experienced more engine running problems.

The skipper duly changed the filters and cleaned things out and... the engine started, ran for a minute and died. A further inspection revealed no fuel reaching the injectors from the fuel pump (a good thing as it turns out). Fearing a broken fuel pump, then engineer was called in and after the best part of Friday was taken with him disassembling the fuel system from the tank forward, he took out the primary fuel filter and took it apart before presenting me with a bag of black oily, jelly like sludge. We have the dreaded fuel 'bug', a fungus that grows in water and feeds on diesel fuel, the fungus forms a colony of sticky gunk that coats all the tank surfaces and contaminates the fuel lines etc. The pic shows the inside of the tank - it should all be a shiny metallic color - not black! If you've ever had to clean out the shower trap of the soap/hair gunk you will get the picture!

The bug comes from taking on board dirty fuel contaminated with water. Unfortunately it's really hard to tell if you are doing this as the water and dirt are all dissolved in the fuel when it is being pumped at high pressure into the tank, but when the boat is sitting still it all separates out. It seems as if somewhere along our journeys we've picked up a bad batch of fuel.

We had to call in the engineers to clean the fuel tanks, they guy arrived on a barge, moored up to us and pumped away our dirty fuel -literally 100l of diesel down the proverbial drain! He then proceeded to clean the black gunk coating the tank, things were looking promising until he came to a baffle (wall welded into the tank to stop fuel sloshing around as the boat moves). He put a scope behind the wall to find bad contamination there also but was unable to access it to clean. So we are now waiting for another engineer to come on Monday morning to cut a hole in the tank and fit an inspection hatch to clean the other half out. Hopefully we will then be able to be on one our way back to Barcelona - a few euros lighter!

The crew has made good use of our time in the marina, exploring inland to Monaco, Nice and Grasse. There are lots of photos loaded on the album of their adventures - including trying multiple strange flavours of ice cream and making perfume.

Once we are underway, again we will mainly use the photo uploads to update what we are doing as the sailblogs site can be hard to update when we are on the move.

Finally in France

14 August 2017 | Anse de Cavaliere
Skipper: SE1, clear, smooth sea
We managed to finally get over to France in a weather window. Leaving NE Spain on Sunday morning, we sailed until 23:30 to reach a town called La Ciotat which has a marina and a large bay, in which we anchored.

This morning Mel and Will took he dinghy ashore to search for bread, croissants and milk. Will deployed his French knowledge to get some very tasty food and milk for the next few days.

We set sail for Cavaliere, another anchorage, which we arrived to at about 19:30. The bay has special significance for the Skipper as we had spent a couple of family summer holidays here. Also a scene of early nautical adventures on a pedalo and topper sailing dinghy. I must confess here that I told my sisters that the dark patches of weed off the beech was water so deep that the sunlight couldn't penetrate so it must be miles deep - a certain sister (who Shall remain nameless) was somewhat perturbed by this and now claims everlasting impact including a fear of seaweed! (Sorry Sarah 😘)

Tomorrow we hope to push on to Cannes as there is a firework display. We then hope to to get to Monaco by Wednesday. There is another storm forecast for the weekend so we will keep a keen eye on the forecast and plans may change accordingly!

Playa Gulloia

12 August 2017 | Playa Guilloia
Si; NNE4-5, smooth sea, sunny
On Friday we moved from Roses to Cadaqués in windy conditions again -although thankfully the sea was smooth as the wind was gusting from the land and we were hugging the coast line. It was a relatively short journey of about three hours and we picked up a mooring buoy off the very picturesque town (see photo album for pics).

After food we went ashore and found a nice creperie to round off the evening!

This morning, Mel and Si went ashore for a walk around the harbour and coast line to the next bay called Port Lligat, where Salvador Dali had his summer residence. It was a pleasant walk with a rugged coastline reminiscent of Gower; Limestone cliffs giving way to small bays and beaches with lots of rock pools.

We left our mooring in Cadaqés and headed north again as short way to our current anchorage. It's hard to believe that this is the first time we've managed to anchor this holiday. The anchorage is very picturesque, but - as a result- very busy. We expect that many of the boats will leave later this afternoon and look forward to a peaceful night. Anyway the good news is that the wind is due to die down from this afternoon and, as I write this, it seems to be doing so. We are hoping tomorrow will see us able to cross the Golfe de Lion to France!
Annalee's Photos - Main
Our summer trip to Netherlands
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