The Adventure Begins....11/07/07

Departure

Well dearly beloved where should this tale begin? Dreams turned to reality as we flew out of Manchester Airport on July 11th 2007 bound for Malaga and the boat in Marbella.

The preparation since retiring on June 24th had been painful to say the least. We thought we had already disposed of most of our possessions but many trips in our transit van to the local council tip and to friends and relatives proved us wrong. Every day was filled with packing and disposing of “all our worldly goods” as they say.

What a lot of material things you acquire along the way without realising it.

Our daughter Suzie drove us to the airport where, it transpired Mags’ mum, Ronnie, sister Pat and brother Chris had taken time out to surprise us with a nice family send off, at least that was the plan. The Campbell’s navigation (or lack of ) skill is legendary and there was an interesting half hour whilst with the aid of frequent calls to the mobile a rendezvous was arranged though for a time it seemed that being in the same airport was as close as we w ere going to be.

A cup of coffee, lots of hugs and kisses and tugging of heart strings and then we were off.

We checked in close enough to the weight limit to be waived through, a formidable achievement for a couple leaving the country you might think? The full truth is that we had realised 10 days previously that we had far too much to take with us and arranged to have it freighted overland. Somewhat optimistically we had arranged for the collection of 3 x 25kg boxes. By the time the lorry had arrived this had grown to 13 boxes and we then had to call them again and arrange to ship another 10 more! But more of that later; quite a few of the boxes were filled with my tools, more of that later too.

It was a funny old feeling knowing we had single tickets. On the flight we decided the occasion warranted a bottle of champagne and a toast to adventure.

Arrival

Our transition from bricks and mortar in England to boat in Spain was eased and simplified by the wonderful help and support we received from Sarah and Mario our long standing friends who lived in San Pedro just outside Marbella.

They clearly thought then and still think now that we were absolutely potty, but as founder members of the potty club themselves, they did not see this mental aberration of ours as any reason not to give us their wholehearted support, added to which they housed and fed us for a month with the style and standard found only in the best hotels and restaurants.

Our plan was simple; put right the items identified in the survey as affecting the yachts seaworthiness, fix the damage to the bow caused in April and get sailing. Other “stuff” could wait until the winter we would carry out a refit and mould the Fox to our requirements.

That was our plan but more of that later too.