Tradewind Adventures

May 11, 2015

We’ve been in Canet for 5 days and El Gato is making daily transformations. First we placed her name on with the stickers from North Sails Graphics. Kudos to Avery, Chelsea, Celeste, and Crystal for helping with the font. Eric did some blue jobs like changing our exhaust hoses and rudder pins, while I unloaded all our luggage, all 9 bags, then we splashed.  The guys at Catana were incredible at squeezing us through the maze of yachts.

Our new view from the water:

We were barely here when our Catalan ambassador Claude showed up for dinner on board, then invited us to his sister’s birthday party where he made a special Catalan dish similar to paella. 

We were delighted to see our couches in leather! And we brought Sammy the Seagull for a little more color.

We tried out the GoSun which is a solar powered grill and it worked beautifully!  Chicken kabobs for dinner! Helps that the sun goes down at 9PM.

I learned how to make aoli from Claude’s mother, and found it is a good way to keep the arms strong.

Yesterday we took a break from the boat, took advantage of our rental car, and headed west towards Castlenou.

And we took down the old French flag and replaced it with a Catalan flag. Forgot to bring a US flag but we don’t have our papers from Catana anyway so why not pretend we are local?

We are using our bikes to go almost everywhere and I’ve even bought small basil and mint plants and pinched off an aloe plant so we can have a garden! It is the best home away from home we could ever have hoped for!

Speaking of hope, we HOPE that Catana will provide the necessary papers so we can take off in a week. And we have been given a great idea – go to Caraques, a beautiful harbor across the border but not too far south. Then we’ll head north east along the South of France. Is it really happening??? YES!