Enhorabuena España! The best football team of the world won the world-cup. I watched the game together with my new Canarian friends in the diving school, after a party on the boat of Gorka, the diving instructor. Everybody had brought food and drinks (I had made Raisin-Walnut-Paprika-Couscous), and it was a wonderful party. It was also very hot, and many jumped (or were made to jump) into the water frequently. This practice got totally out of hand after the match, as people where lifted up and dragged away to be thrown off the 5m high jetty. Even though I had to climb out of the water four times I am very happy to have found some friends here. It makes a huge difference to my life. Most voyagers are easy to get along with and you get acquainted very quickly, often within minutes. But it's different with locals. To them voyagers come and go so quickly that it's not worth the effort to get to know them better. And often enough the boaties don't care much for the locals and stick to themselves. So if you want to you have to make the effort yourself: Stay at the same place for a while, show a little respect, do as they do and be consistent. But it's impossible to do that when you sail every few days from one harbor to the next in order to get to see the country. Instead of seeing all of the country I prefer to get to know the people where I stay. So for me doing longer sails and then staying somewhere for a few weeks is the better choice. Otherwise the work is going well on Gudrun V. Only the winches are giving me a hard time. The stainless-steel screws are firmly locked into the aluminium threads, and it takes a gas-torch, impact driver and a lot of patience to get them out. After three days of work I only have six of the twelve winches removed. But today I will finish preparing the rigging for having the mast taken out tomorrow. It needs new fittings, rolls etc. and new paint - a lot of work. In the meantime Octavio and Domingo from Alisios Sailing Center are working on the new sails and rigging. As it turned out Octavio knows Marti and Yaiza (Gudrun V's previous owners), because his wife comes from the same town. And Domingo is an Olympic gold-medalist and two times Americas Cup sailor (1999, 2007). In addition they are really nice guys, and talking and working with them is great fun. Unfortunately even though Octavio made a good price, the new sails (genoa, full-battened main-, stay- and storm-sail) are costing me an arm and a leg: 6000 EUR. Originally I wanted simple cross-cut Dacron sails. But as the difference in price is not very big I went for the better performing DC Sandwich Polyester with a radial cut in the end. Fortunately I can at least reuse the Gennaker from Vespina.
