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Published: January 28th 2024
So, what do you do when living on a boat in January in Cartagena, Spain? Most of the time, ordinary things that most do in their own homes – cooking, dishes, cleaning, laundry, going grocery shopping, run errands to pick up things in a variety of stores and find time to read and relax. Well, we do these as well, but we do notice that many of these tasks take longer than they do for us at home.
Yes, our home here is only 40 foot long, but as the space is broken up and there are numerous “little spaces” to clean or sort, it actually sometimes takes longer to get those areas sorted. The addition of trying to move things out of the way but not “disrupt” the rest of the boat too much is a challenge. It seems when you work on one area, it means moving things in another – “funny” how that works…
The washer and drier here run about 50 minutes each so that isn’t different. The thing that is that you need to pack it up, carry it off the boat and up to where the machines are and hope that there is
a machine open to use. Each marina is different but this one has 3 washing machines and only 1 drier. We know that many like to dry their clothes on the boat, but we typically use the drier as really don’t have good space to hang a whole load of clothes out. With so few machines and quite a few people here on their boats, you really need to be sure to watch your time so you move your clothes out of the machine when the time is up. If your boat is close to the lounge where the laundry is, you can go back to the boat to try to do something else, but in a few of the marinas we have been in over the years the distance you have to travel doesn’t make sense. Fortunately, here our boat isn’t too far so we can do that. The other option is to take your computer, phone or iPad up to the lounge and use the marina wi-fi if you’d like OR turn on the TV located there to see if there is anything interesting.
The same goes with the showers – there are two shower/toilet blocks in
this marina but the one closest to us has three “stalls” for each gender. Here the toilet and shower are in the same “room” so again we try to time our showers at “off” hours. We have been fortunate in that system seems to be working for us as many times we take ours very late at night or in the middle of the day. In fact, with the number of people here on their boats this time of year we have been surprised at how well it has worked. Just hope now that I have said that out loud, it hasn’t ‘jinxed’ us!
Grocery shopping probably takes the longest amount of time as it entails either walking to the store or checking the bus schedule to see which ones will take you closest to the stores. We typically enjoy the walking as it gives us a chance to stop at other shops if needed or try new streets to get to the same place. Also, it has been a good for stretching out our legs some after being on the boat! If we do have a large shopping to do, we have caught a bus in various locations
– we haven’t tried it here in Cartagena yet as haven’t needed to but they do have a good bus system here to get to the locations of the various grocery stores here. They also have lots of great fruit and vegetable markets scattered around the city. We do have a shopping trolley that we can pull on those days we know we are going for quite a few heavy items. Normally our backpack and reusable shopping bags work out for bringing our groceries back to the boat.
Here in Cartagena, there are a number of people living on their boat in the marina. Some are like us that have a home in their home country so travel back and forth, while others have sold everything like we did when we first left and stay year-round on their boat. Fortunately, here in Cartagena a couple of people have organized some activities. Every Sunday there is a barbeque that you can attend – you bring a dish to pass, something to cook on the grill for yourself and one euro each that goes to buying the charcoal for the fire. It is a nice way to get a chance to
meet others here. Every other Wednesday there is tapas night when anyone interested meets at the front gate and walks to a place in town to have a drink and tapas – another way to socialize. The first one was on the night we arrived so didn’t go, but will plan on it this week. Another person leads a yoga class once a week and yet others lead different hikes each week. We haven’t tried either of those yet, but may before we leave here.
There are numerous forts located on the hills around Cartagena so can see that there are plenty of places to hike to. We have seen that the groups have hiked to many of them already so will check out their hiking maps and probably do them on our own for now.
What is the weather like here in Cartagena in January? It is definitely a place that you want to dress in layers! When the wind is up the temperature goes down so our wind breakers are a good layer. When the sun comes out in full force during the day, just a light vest or jacket will do and surprisingly since being
here we both had our shorts on (but it didn’t last too long). Unfortunately, that is sometimes short lived so change back into jeans especially when the clouds roll in. During the day it has been in the low 60’s and at night it is in the mid-50s with it dipping down to high 40’s a couple of times. We have been surprised on some days with high humidity so it does make it feel cooler than the thermometer tells us. Even with this, we are happy that we aren’t shoveling any snow or worrying about driving on icy roads.
In the evenings we do tend to need our electric portable heater on and we sit and read with a lap blanket over us, long sleeves, jeans and a fleece. It is important to have warm socks and slippers on as the cold water that surrounds the boat does make the floor feel quite cold. Fortunately, we are all set with those too. A nice hot cup of tea, hot chocolate or coffee is always a nice addition in the evening while we relax and read. Not a bad way to spend our time.
We did finally get
a couple of days where we wore shorts all day which was fabulous! It was sunny with no wind which was even better! We have to keep reminding ourselves that it is January when it is so nice. This is one of the reasons we came back to Spain this time of year.
We did make it to the tapas night, but surprisingly we were the only other couple that showed up besides the one that organized it. We still went and had a lovely time. It actually worked out nice as we had a chance to really visit with this couple – he is from Belgium and she is from France, but fortunately for us their English was definitely much better than our French!
One couple we have met is from Austria and found out that Barbara helps people trace their family history. I have worked on my family tree on and off for years. I had mentioned to her that I had some information on my grand grandfather that came over from Germany but didn’t have information from when he was in Europe. She said I should give her the information that I have and she’d
have a look. She also did ask for my maiden’s name for my father’s side as my German ancestor I told her about was on my mother’s side. Well, to my shock she sent back a note to me the next day saying she had found some interesting information. The following day, I got another note that she found even more, but didn’t say what it was. She invited me over to their boat the other day (SV Pink Penguin) and she showed me a huge family tree and indicated that she found ancestors from Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Ireland. She had many of the photos of my ancestors and had mapped out where they were born, lived and died. What a wealth of information she has provided to me!
Bob had teased when I left the boat to go over to find out what she had discovered, that if she found I had royal blood, he hoped he didn’t have to start bowing down to me due to my royal blood. I told her this and after we both laughed about it, she showed me some of my royal ancestors! It was fascinating to find out so
much information which included occupations, schooling and a few newspaper articles with interesting stories about them. I am now so excited to get back to working on the family tree again with all of this added information (some has been verified but others still need to be). I know that she does this work for others for hire so of course asked what I owed her – she said nothing, so we have made arrangements that we will take her and her husband to dinner before we leave to go back to the US. What a bonus this was!
Other friends of ours that we met in Marmaris, Dawn and Joe, will be leaving for the US before we get back from our railroad trip round Spain so probably this coming week will be the last, we see them for awhile unless of course we “bump” into them in the Caribbean as they are crossing the Atlantic this coming year as well. We have learned over the years, many times you are surprised by crossing paths again which continues to remind us how small this world is. Had a lovely night out with them the other night at a
great Indian restaurant here and will see them at the Sunday barbeque and Wednesday tapas night this week – guess we have a few things on the calendar this last week before our 6 weeks of travel.
You can’t be on a boat without having a project to work on. This past year when sailing from Turkey to Spain we noticed that the stainless-steel tubing that creates the leg that holds up our instruments in the cockpit was cracking. As a temporary patch Bob took a couple of stainless bars and taped them on either side of it to strengthen it until it could get fixed permanently. It is in a location where we grab on to it when moving around the cockpit so we definitely want to get it fixed from a safety point of view as well.
To have it repaired we must remove it – at first glance it wouldn’t seem like a big job, until you know that all of the wires that connect the instruments to the electrical panel run through that tubing. We know first hand as we put them through there when we were upgrading Tsamaya before we left in 2010.
There are LOTS of wires that run through there making it quite tight. With both of us working on it, we were able to get the wires out (after double checking that all the wires were labelled). We walked the stainless piece over to the boatyard next door and they said they could get it fixed in a few days. That is great, but in the meantime that means the boat is pretty much torn up. The area that the wires have to go through to get to the electrical panel had to be emptied out. This now means that the cockpit is filled with all of the items that had been stored there. As the repair has been promised in just a couple of days, we have decided to leave things out so we can get to work on putting it all together as soon as we get it back. Wish us luck!
I am now writing this on Saturday, the repair is promised to us on Monday afternoon and we start our trip by train around Spain on Friday. Hopefully we can get everything back together and even more importantly, working correctly within a couple of days.
Our idea had been to just travel around Spain while here, but once we planned the whole month of February, we decided we still have March over here so why not continue traveling around. As a result, we will extend our travels to Vienna and to Budapest. There are plenty of other places we’d love to go as well, but decided we really will need to get back to the boat to get it ready to leave when we return to the US. Even that trip will be different this year as we will be stopping off in Dublin for a few days on our way back.
We have lots of plans during our travels over the next 6 weeks so not sure if I’ll be able to get any more blog updates during that time, but will at least try to put up a few photos on FB while traveling. Time will tell to see what I actually get done. If not, will definitely be working on updating after we return to the US near the beginning of April (so have time to get our US taxes done!)
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
Ancestors...
I'm pleased to hear that you have had a breakthrough in your hunt for ancestors. I remember early on in my hunt, having a knight as an ancestor was a big deal. Recently my travels have been to where my ancestors came from, with my blogs from last August and September to Scotland and Sweden being an example. I found that once you can find an ancestor through Google, you are provided links to many ancestry websites. I found geni.com to be the best as it has documentation like church records, legal documents, etc. And it provides the names of the parents and children, so you can go up and down the tree. I had so many I have had to cull anyone not in the direct bloodline like aunts/uncles. At this moment I have 21,485 direct ancestors going back to a Welsh ancestor born in 40 BC; a Swedish/Norwegian ancestor going back 240 AD, and the Arab general who conquered the Iberian peninsula., etc. .Good luck in your search!