The boat is almost ready. We've got some big jobs still to be finished including having a bilge pump installed, and a chart plotter and AIS put in, and these will happen over the next few weeks. The gas alarm system has been bought and wired in.
As we negotiate each of these things with Spanish technicians and salesmen, there is much laughter, reading of facial expressions, drawing of diagrams, and consulting of Spanish dictionaries to make sure that the right model is ordered, or that the options around the intricacies of wiring are completely understood. It's fun, and there is a lot of goodwill and encouraging smiling.
The language of physical pain is universal though. Michael's finger was wedged into the ring-pull handle of the floor board that he had lifted up, a predicament not known to the lovely Spanish man who was trying to help take the quite heavy board from Michael, twisting it sideways to fit it past the stairs and into the passageway. In the small space that held two men, other lifted floorboards, technicians' tools, and the stairs, groans and gasps filled the short distance between the men as they twisted and turned, one smiling with satisfaction at a job nearly done, the other gyrating in a strange fashion like a whirling Dervish. You can't help but laugh at these ridiculous events, and we all smiled warmly as we understood that no words were needed here.
We're off tomorrow on a three week inland tour to Granada, Seville, Cordoba, Jerez, Cadiz, Gibraltar, over the Gibraltar Straits to Morocco, back to Spain at Malaga, and then to the boat in Cartagena. We leave the boat with clothes, kitchen gear, spare parts, canvas covers, tools, sails, buckets and emergency gear all sorted and stowed, and when we get back, we'll be almost ready to set sail. It all looks fabulous. It's a lovely boat and is very comfortable to live on.
Today we can hear the bells ringing from the many churches of this town, while the rasping sound of screeching gulls fills the background as they circle over the boats and wharf. There's time to do things in this life, and time to watch and listen. Sometimes it feels as though we are perched on a branch of a tree watching life below, seeing the small and the large, sensing the movements of how people walk together as they promenade in the square, and drawing up all the colours of wide marbled walkways, elegant women, and decorated horses.