SY Scrabbler

Vessel Name: Scrabbler
Vessel Make/Model: Nicholson 39
Hailing Port: Cowes
28 August 2017
24 June 2017 | Guadiana River
22 June 2017 | Culatra
21 June 2017 | Culatra
20 June 2017 | Culatra, Portugal
20 March 2017 | Somewhere in the Portuguese bushes
18 October 2016 | Guadiana River
17 October 2016 | Guadiana River
16 October 2016 | Guadiana River
16 October 2016 | Guadiana River
15 October 2016 | Guadiana River
08 October 2016 | Culatra-Ayamonte
07 October 2016 | Culatra
05 October 2016 | Culatra
04 October 2016 | Ferragudo-Culatra
03 October 2016 | Ferragudo
03 October 2016 | Lagos
30 September 2016 | Lagos
04 September 2016 | Gibraltar
02 September 2016 | Gibraltar
Recent Blog Posts
28 August 2017

Sailing with my friends

It's 25 years since we first sailed across the channel together so it was great to have my friends visit over August bank holiday. A couple of nights anchored off Culatra, swimming, drinking and eating. Great sailing back to Ayamonte with dolphins swimming around the bow. Hope we can do it again next year!

24 June 2017 | Guadiana River

A hasty escape...

After two wonderful days at Casa Amarilla with Eddi and Claire Scrabbler forced us to perform a funny and hasty escape. BBQ, lounging by the pool, swapping "farmer's" stories and admiring the garden makes it very easy to slip into landlubber mode. We could see Scrabbler dancing but heho, she always does. Over lunch we spotted her on the OTHER side of the river, sailing quite fast down toward the sea! Off we went and actually had to chase her a bit. Eddi had fun watching! Naughty girl, she re-anchored herself right in the middle of the river, the wind picked up and blew along the valley with F6-7 and so she went crazy on her anchor chain. Rubaiyat was much better behaved. Like a rock, steady, no hanky-panky. Ah well, we caught her of course and set sail, like she wanted us to, and sailed down the river to finish our little holiday with a tapas crawl on the 2017 Ruta de Tapas in Ayamonte.

22 June 2017 | Culatra

Scrabbler is restless!

She is dancing the wind dance every night! During the day there is no wind. We have not sailed properly so far. But at night it blows and just look, what she does! Crazy girl. But the boat is cool inside and we sleep like babies.

21 June 2017 | Culatra

Midsummer

We are lazy, lazy, lazy. The sea is lazy as well. Lovely for swimming. Liz and Dave are here now and so the girls swim, the boys tinker, the BBQ is working hard - all good! We are still on the same Galp bottle I bought years ago in Lagos. We are getting worried! How does that still work? We grilled and roasted and even baked sooooo many things and still have gas. What does it live off? Strange...

20 June 2017 | Culatra, Portugal

Culatra yet again!

We escaped the farming life and are bobbing at anchor in one of the little paradises of Portugal. What more can one say? We sort of remember still how to do it. All the essentials at least...BBQ, fridge, getting friends over, swimming....

20 March 2017 | Somewhere in the Portuguese bushes

Long silence = Lots happening

But not so much at sea. We sailed Scrabbler to her new Spanish home and set off to purchase ourselves a landbase. After ten and more years of gypsie live and homelessness we decided, it would be a good idea to have an off-the-grid landbase. Like a boat on water! Just a bit bigger. We went bigger because [...]

18 October 2016 | Guadiana River

Breakfast Visitor

Almost every morning we have these cute visitors dancing around our boat. They truly dance whilst flying! Maybe it is a courtship ritual. It sure does look amazing! And every now and then they rest on Scrabbler and give us the eye.

17 October 2016 | Guadiana River

Exploring

Whilst James is having a day in the office I am exploring the river using my favourite toy, the Oru. It slices lovely through the water and the river current are no problem at all. Raced Jax in her Bird yesterday and won!

16 October 2016 | Guadiana River

Jam(s)ie Oliver

hard at work at tonights dinner. Flame-grilled lamb chops on Mediterranean salad! Yummy!

16 October 2016 | Guadiana River

Waking up

alone on the river to very close by bird activity just to find THIS! The mother of all rafts we have ever collected. Trees, bamboo, twigs...no dead sheep though, like somebody else had this summer. We had to launch Storker to do some serious cleaning up. It had built up several layers deep and took quite some time. We have the feeling, that the bamboo is spreading quite badly along the river shore. Well, it does count as a pest and it certainly strives here! At times we looked at a whole forrest of bamboo during our walk!

Refit: Day 1

17 June 2015 | Lagos, Portugal
Jana
Today was the day. Month ago we booked the hoisting out with Pedro from Sopromar. Coming 15 minutes before the time into the fishing harbour of Lagos and motoring towards the sling, we discovered, a vessel in the slings and only one guy leisurely spraying it off. Nobody else in view. So after a few minutes we rang the office just to be told, that Scrabbler is already on the hard. Okay??????? What are we currently motoring in then? We thought, we are on our yacht and it is called Scrabbler... Well, turns out Scrabbler II, our previous boat had been hoisted already. The lady in the office then asked me to take down a phone number to call Pedro (the boss)! I refused and asked her to put me through, since I am on the helm motoring in circles amongst the Lagos day trippers and fishing boats. After several minutes Pedro appeared and sure enough, we did have an appointment for hoisting. Normally you need 4 guys to get the ropes on for corners of the boat to centre her in the concrete hoisting bay. Not so Sopromar. 3 guys and all of them appeared to never seen a boat before. Where do they find these people? The hoist operator then proceeded to place the slings. I marked the spots with bright ORANGE! strings, clearly visible. I pointed them out several times and ended up shouting at him to stop. Well, what do I know, right? Just a woman on a boat. Tight goes the front sling which is again not connected to the aft sling (despite Sopromar having dropped a 20t steel yacht just a few years ago...They do not learn!) and sure enough, the sloped section of the keel is no place for a sling and in sliding forward it ripped the entire log assembly to shreds as we discovered later. So try again and this time he placed them under the orange markers and what a surprise, up she goes without a problem. It then took a while but now we are high and dry amongst the resident disabled seagulls at the beach end of the yard right on the water. Exactly the same spot Muckly was before. The seagulls know us and are probably not so happy being disturbed every day.
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