Showing posts with label but. Show all posts
Showing posts with label but. Show all posts
Saturday, 18 July 2015
Cala Deia – no sand but what a beach
August 24 - 2012
After our wild, windswept night we left Port de Soller reasonably early in the morning with the original thought of maybe sailing 21 miles west to Dragonerra Island just off the north western corner of Mallorca. However once again something in our pilot guide had caught our interest.
Cala Deia was listed as a small, picturesque bay with a small beach and fishermen’s huts at its head. The nearby town of Deia was described as being about a mile inland and ‘amongst the lovliest of Mallorca’s villages and the antitheses of the tourist resorts that abound on much of the coastline.’ Now that sounded intriguing but it was only about three miles down the coast so not much of a sail.
Never the less we felt we really should have a look and if the anchorage was OK and the place seemed as interesting as it was described we might stay. In no time at all we were anchored in a very attractive little bay surrounded by high cliffs that provided good shelter from the south westerly breezes blowing. It certainly wouldn’t be the place to be in any sort of northerly though.
The beach was in fact all stone with just two small restaurants but was well populated with swimmers. With its rocky shore, ancient looking boat sheds and lack of resorts, Cala Deia simply had a nice feel to it. So OK, we set a new Alcheringa record for the shortest day’s sail at 3.7 nautical miles as we quickly decided to stay. That’s what we love about having a true cruising schedule, no rush.
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| Fantastic old fishermen's boat houses at Cala Diea |
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| Karen cooling off at Cala Deia - Mallorca |
It was a particularly hot day so we cooled off with a good swim before having lunch aboard. Then we headed ashore to walk it all off with a visit to village of Deia. While the guide book had said Deia was ‘about’ one mile inland what it didn’t mention was in that mile the elevation went from sea level to about 1000 feet and the path winding through the olive groves and goat farms was more like three miles and all UP! It was certainly a good work out in 40c heat but very picturesque which made it enjoyable.
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| The path to Deia goes up through the olive groves |
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| And up over live stock barriers |
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| And up some more |
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| And up through the lanes |
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| And all the way up to the church |
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| But most importantly, up to a rehydration stop |
When we did finally reach the village though we went straight into first café we came to for re-hydration therapy. Deia is everything the guide book said and more. It’s a fantastic traditional village largely unspoilt by modern times. We had a great time wandering around the narrow laneways admiring all the very old stone houses and cottages. This was also the home of author and poet Robert Graves who wrote I Claudius and over 140 other works for over 50 years before his death in 1985. We passed by his house and made our way right to the church right on top of a high ridge overlooking the town, the valley and sea where visited his very humble grave.
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| Marc leading the way through Deia |
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| The view from the churchyard back down the valley to the water |
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| The very modest final resting place of Robert Graves |
Finally we made our way back down to the beach and had a couple of huge G&Ts in the very rustic beach bar. After our trek, sitting and watching the antics of the kids somersaulting off the rocks was a very entertaining way to relax. Rock jumping seems to be a very popular activity here on Mallorca. Anywhere we go where there’s rocks and water people seem to love leaping from one to the other. By the time we’d narrowly survived our second near litre glass of Gin and Tonic in the beach bar (at 3 euro they were hard to resist but a third would have been fatal), we’d watched people of both sexes and from about 6 to their 60s find a suitable rock and throw themselves off it.
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| It's not the camera angle. The G&T's really were almost a litre each. Alcheringa at anchor in the background |
It even continued when we got back to the boat as we watched a particularly agile group repeatedly scale a reasonably sheer cliff beside us and leap into thin air. Sometimes with elegant splashes on entry and at others creating massive eruptions of water which we can only assume would have been accompanied by considerable levels of pain somewhere. Each to their own.
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| First you climb the cliff from the water |
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| Then he jumps. See if you can spot him against the background of the rocks |
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| Then she jumps. Then they do it all over again. |
That night we had the entire anchorage to ourselves as the few other boats that had been around all left before sunset. With almost no wind, no waves, no shore side discos and no bongo drums it was super peaceful. Our lack of sack time the previous night combined with our mountain hike ensured we all slept extremely well.
Thank you Cala Deia for a fantastic day.
For more about our travels check out and 'like' our Dreamtimesail facebook page at
http://www.facebook.com/DreamtimeSail?ref=hl
For more about our travels check out and 'like' our Dreamtimesail facebook page at
http://www.facebook.com/DreamtimeSail?ref=hl
Thursday, 7 October 2010
Too much tech but not enough lifetime
I'm the oldest of three male urchins. Because I was the oldest, I got the more important jobs in the household. At about 12 years of age, I was promoted, and the next oldest sibling got my old job of taking the pipe wench outside, and using it to turn the antenna pole until the Chief, (spelled Dad) yelled that's good, no no back a bit, stop." It was 1964. There were three TV stations that operated until about midnight, and we watched it on a black and white TV. This was good, because I had now graduated to the job of TV repairman PFC Bishop.
This job consisted of quietly watching the activities when the TV was not feeling well. The scenario was always the same. The TV lived in a custom built niche, and much like the Virgin Mary the set was metaphorically worshiped nightly. When the TV broke, the Chief would extract it, and set it on the dinning room table. Screws were removed, the back came off, and the plug was detached from the back, and plugged back into the set. The lights would be turned down, and the set was turned on. All available eyes would look at the tubes to see who would be the first to spot the tube that was not glowing. "Aha", would declare the Chief, that's the problem. The set would be unplugged, the tube extracted, and put into my hands.
The job of the young TV repairman PFC Bishop was to ride my bike with tube in hand to a local convenience store where there was a tube tester very much like the one below. It was a heady responsibility. My keen eyes would study the pin pattern on the tube, and find the socket it fit into. Once in place, you would push a button labeled 'Test". The needle would stay in the red if it was bad. You didn't want it to go into the green since that meant a trip to the actual TV repairman to get it fixed, and no TV for a week. Almost always, the Chief''s diagnosis was on the money, and I returned with a new tube. The smallest urchin's job was to change, and tune the channels. It was a good thing remote controls were invented, for him at any rate.
Enough of the technological nostalgia. The truth is that unlike the old black and white TV, almost nothing made today that is electronic can be fixed when it breaks. When a higher tech product is new, you can buy replacement boards for it, but as a product ages it will quickly become obsolete, and manufacturers stop supporting it. The question is "How long does this take? The answer is "It's hard to tell exactly, but we do know that it is getting shorter all of the time, and sometimes it can be very short". This is where we start.
Products become obsolete for three reasons. The first is that technological advances render older products unattractive in the buyers mind and sales diminish. The second is that components used to make the product are discontinued due to low demand, again driven by technological advances. The third is smaller innovative companies are not always successful for a variety of reasons, and they are either sold, or cease to exist.
A simple case in point about all of this are the two boxes you see above. These are relay boxes used to turn things on and off on a boat. They got their switching orders in life from sealed rubber membrane switch panels on the console.
In this case the manufacturer sold the product line to another company, who promptly redesigned the product, and stopped manufacturing the old product. The boat was only a few years old when the box on the right failed. I found another box after hours of searching, and it was the last one in existence. When one of these boxes fails again, all of the stuff will have to be ripped out, and something new will have to be installed in its place, like regular switches or another module system. This will not be a simple or inexpensive task.
Imagine for just a moment that you had to replace all of the wiring on your new 60 footer. I shudder at even imagining how it could be done at all. Wiring that snakes up in-between panels, or under headliners. Miles of wire bundles going everywhere. But the good news is wire rarely ever goes bad, but being able to identify where a wire goes, and what it does can be an odious task. For most boats, if all of your wiring somehow was destroyed, most insurance companies would likely total a larger boat right on the spot.
The boat currently has zero 110VAC, which is useful for minor items such as refrigeration, entertainment systems, and lighting due to what appears to be an inverter failure. There's currently no documentation on any of wiring with the exception of the owners manual which has basic wiring diagrams for a boat that has no power distribution system. No information on the after market equipment installation or integration can be found yet, and the original installer is MIA. Two hours of searching the boat with the captain finally yielded the inverter location, behind a mini frig in the master stateroom.
There are two points to this discussion. The first is that the more sophisticated vessel systems become, the greater need for good technical documentation, and more sophistication begs the thought, "What is the realistic life span of the high tech systems, on your boat, and if they failed what could you replace it with, if the original equipment was no longer available?" For a power distribution system, major failure means no boat power at all.
So I'm not going to stick my neck out very far, and make a good Vegas bet. The current average age of boats for sale is about 20 years old according to some data I have looked at. I know that in twenty years, or maybe even possibly in much less time the existing power distribution system will fail, or parts for it will no longer be available. Boat builders should know and plan for this, but I think this is not yet apparent to most.
All of the PDS wiring should be clearly labeled, and terminated on blocks. Termination is now on proprietary connectors. Module locations need to documented, and placed in accessible locations where it's possible to do new interconnect wiring. Panels need to have the same requirements. System programming flowcharts, software code, and complete as built wiring diagrams, should be supplied to the owner upon delivery of the vessel. All gear should be off the shelf. Specially designed gear should be avoided if at all possible, and none of this "it's top secret" stuff please.
I don't want anyone to think that I don't like this type of technology, because I do. I just know that if builders don't plan for the inevitable, their buyers will pay a steep price for today's technology, tomorrow. By the way, I know wire isn't cheap when you buy it, but the long term warranty costs for it are very low when compared to the bleeding edge.
The photo of the tube tester was taken by Wikipedia user Steve Jurvetson
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