Barcelona - Part 2 Covers the period December 31, 2000 to January 30, 2001 As mentioned in the previous log, the cruisers wintering in Barcelona were a supportive community, sharing the love of sailing. We have to thank Doug on Mindemoya who came from Port Vell to our mooring in Port Olympic one morning to dive off our bow to retrieve the lens of our bicolour navigation light which was accidentally knocked in the water. As we do not have a wet suit on board, we didn’t want to risk a 15 foot deep search in the clear but cold water. In addition, Mike on Trilogy was most helpful in showing how an audio coupler could be hooked up to a pay phone and E-mail sent via public phones. We now have ordered one. John, another Canadian, on Dani II helped me with some downloading problems with my Mac laptop. Julie a Brit on Icebreaked cut my hair, and John, another Canadian, on Lil Ollie stitched in a new vinyl window on my dodger. Port Olimpic is a modern marina, very close to a large shopping mall with a large grocery store, butcher shops, photo labs, optician, bakeries, restaurants, including a variety of fish, and ham restaurants and tapas bars, and a 15 theatre cineplex with most movies in VOSE. That term when used is like VOICE ORIGINAL in France, meaning the movie is in its original language with subtitles in the local language. I had a good chance to get caught up on the latest movies in English. The harbour is ringed with restaurants and bars, with dramatic sculptures adorning the many parklands, and a seaside walk stretching down sandy beaches to Barceloneta and the Port Vell area. The area was the site of the Olympic village in the 1994 World Olympics. The afternoon of December 31, a group of us went out in Soleil Sans Fin, a very nice 47 foot Juneau, with Bill and Jean to watch the start of THE RACE. It was a lovely clear windy day with the hundreds of boats, three masted tall ships, luxury yachts, high speed catamaran ferries, gaff rigged cutters, sloops, yawls, ketches, overpowered inflatable ribs, a military patrol boat, and a few beautiful classic raked masted schooners and Flying Dutchmen, all milling around trying to get a glimpse of these six giant cats that were going to start from Barcelona on their non stop around the world race. There were committee boats and the military patrol boat trying to keep the spectators back from the course lines, but always a few were slow in responding. The police launches, in order to intimidate the spectator boats to clear the course line, would pound up at full speed to the offending boat, creating a huge wake, and shaking the boat up as a punishment for encroaching in the start area.  For me it was reminiscent of the summer I spent with the Canadian Navy patrol vessel, Acadian, in Newport, Rhode Island as escort to CANADA 1, our entry into the America’s Cup Challenge series in 1985, the year Australia took the Cup away from the U.S. We were detached from CANADA 1 to serve as a security vessel for the Challenger series, in the final security ring around the start line and at each of the course buoys as the competitors approached them. It was a wonderful experience seeing these non-US America’s Cup challengers in their prestart manoeuvers close up, then racing them up to the next buoys, and to the finish line to keep spectators away. However, we did not try to intimidate them by swamping them with our wake. We just asked them over a loudspeaker to clear the area. A few times the competitors actually beat us to the next mark, as in sailing a straight line as they did on their downwind leg, they could go faster under sail than our 80 foot patrol vessel.  One intimidating and ethereal moment happened when in the prestart manoeuvers, the two boats darted over towards the Acadian, and then started their circling strategy around us! We stopped engines and stayed stationery so as not to interfere with their manouevering. This prestart circling strategy is a common one, as in match racing, the boat that breaks the circle first in the best position to hit the start line at the gun, has the edge on the race. There we were, engines stopped, and these two giant racing machines circling us like sharks, no sound, except the sibilance of the sea surging from their bow waves and the swish of their jib travellers and the muffled, well-oiled metallic grinding of their winches as they tacked and jybed, executing tight silent 360 degree circles around us for four or five revolutions. When they finally sliced off into another tactic, we realized we had been holding our breath in awe and respect for these finely tuned, high tech racing machines and their dedicated coordinated, and fantastically fit crews, circling us, just a few feet away from our bow and stern.  Regarding the crews fitness, I was always impressed by the crew member whose task it was while the yacht was going full speed under spinnaker, to climb up a control line hand over hand at the end of their downwind leg, 30 feet above the bow to the outer end of the spinnaker boom, releasing the tack of the spinnaker just as they jybed around the downwind mark, hoisting the jib, dowsing the spinnaker, and hardening on to a close hauled upwind beat. Crew had to be true athletes, extremely fit, to participate in any kind of dinghy or yacht racing.  However, I digress. Barcelona was an appropriate starting point for THE RACE as it was from here that Christopher Columbus set off on his first transatlantic voyage to discover The New World in 1492. There is a statute of him mounted on a tall pillar at the foot of La Rambla, showing him overlooking the harbour and dramatically pointing westward. THE RACE goes from Barcelona 26,000 nautical miles, down the African coast, around the Cape of Good Hope, over through the Cook Straits of New Zealand, across the south Pacific around the infamous Cape Horn, and back up the Atlantic to the Med ending at Marseilles. Bill positioned Soleil Sans Fin inshore of the final start box. The actual start had the cats going eastward up the coast a few miles on a triangular course, for a photo op, and to get free of the milling spectator boats, then they came back past Barcelona and Port Olimpic, through the start box and off on their circumnavigation. So we had a great sight of them as they worked up to speed on their first leg start towards Gibraltar. They were a bit strung out so we could see each one of them as they crossed a couple of hundred yards in front of us, some of them actually lifting their starboard hull clear of the water as they drove off on a broad reach in about 15 to 20 knots of wind. Fantastic! Timing their run on the triangular prestart course, we estimated they were "only" doing between 18 to 25 knots, knowing that they are capable of achieving up to 40 knots in appropriate conditions. On shore the organizers had a videotron mounted dockside, showing each of these beautiful giants in their full glory pounding through heavy seas at high speeds, lifting their hulls clear of the water between waves to slice or crash through the next ones to surge on at higher and higher velocity.  It was too bad the Team Philips yacht from the UK sunk during her sea trials, and was absent from THE RACE. We saw her going up the Thames last spring when the Queen presided over dedication ceremonies for it. This maxi cat was unusual in its design in that it had two main sails, one on each hull, and only two cross supports as opposed to the three on all the other maxi cats. It had problems in all its sea trials, being ignominiously hauled in to the Scillies when her port hull bow broke off in heavy weather. Later she then floundered again in the Atlantic in November, and the crew taken off as she sank. There have been some nasty rumours circulating that the crew allowed, if not caused her to sink, rather than risk their lives in an unproven boat in a gruelling around-the-world race. Possibly any insurance claim may also have been a motive. I find such hard to believe.  We had an enjoyable New Years Eve on Blue Highway with Russ and Lynne and two other couples. We first met Russ and Lynne in Bermuda in May of 1999, then again in the Azores, Chichester, Brighton, the Medway and in London for the winter where they were up at St Katherines Dock. We then met them up in Stornoway in June last summer , and now here in Barcelona. We have kept in touch via E-mail, and have enjoyed their company. At midnight there were fireworks around the city with several boats setting off flares, some not so perpendicularly aimed, and risked falling on boats in the marina. On January 11, we shifted over to Port Vell for our final two weeks in Barcelona. We had toured the town, did some maintenance, found a very good used parts chandlery, had some good restaurant meals (though not as good as France), enjoyed some Flamenco music and dancing, took in a circus, and watched the arrival of the Three kings, an important post Christmas festival. Our departure was delayed by the tardiness of the main SONY facility in repairing (Ha!) our AM/FM/Cassette/CD radio. On January 3 we were told two weeks, then kept getting put off. On January 27 I finally demanded the radio, and it was then ready by 1800. However when hooked up the next day, the tape deck still did not work. Back again wasting another day leaving it for Judy to pick up when she returned to Barcelona on her way to Paris in February I’m afraid I do not have a high respect for the Spanish work ethic, and the two and three hour siesta mid day just kills the expediency of getting things done, shopping or touring. However I guess my attitude isn’t laid back enough yet.  Because of this delay, the next three days we had poor weather reports, so we couldn’t leave. Time was short as were to meet Brian and Irene from London in Mallorca February 2. Finally a good weather window on January 31, and we left, only to experience unpredicted gales and the worst gear failure that almost dismasted us. More about the 150 mile crossing to Mallorca in the next log.