Written by Mia:
Addaya became home for big parts of June and most of July and August. It is a beautiful place with many wonderful people and it was hard to leave, even though we were very eager to get on the road, or actually water again. As you have probably read earlier, hauling Itchy Foot out of the water and returning to her was a lot more work than we anticipated and we will probably not be keen to do that again any time soon. We did as many of the tasks as we could ourselves, with Jon even re-doing the anti-fouling and rewiring for the solar panels and maintenance of instruments. There were many long days of work starting early and ending after dark. The last week of this with Jon hobbling around on his second sprained ankle. We were unhappy with the delays and the way the work was handled in the end, but Addaya has a way with her magic and what we remember most is the lovely community, in other words the wonderful people we met.
Mari, Juana, Martin and Ernesto in the port office of course were amazingly kind and generous to us, and we all enjoyed our daily chats and all their help. We cannot speak highly enough of the people who run this marina, if you have the chance, visit them! I think they all have a soft spot for Teo offering often to have him in the office when Jon and I did something like relaunching Itchy Foot into the water and I think our little ambassador is the reason they gave us such a nice price, too. It is a wonderful marina to call home. We have already mentioned Stewart and Anne, and we will be forever indebted to them and their kindness and generosity. You will see them popping up in the blog from time to time, we have a common goal of Gibraltar by the end of the month. It is always lovely when we are in the same place. Through Stewart and Anne we also met Nick and Vanessa, who are fabulous neighbours with whom we shared a few days but the connection feels much stronger than that. Nick askedI Teo, “Are you good with a hose?” and Teo just looked up at him in awe and answered “I am GREAT with a hose” and they spent the next hour or two cleaning a dinghy and Jon and I got a LOT done in those couple of hours! We went food shopping together and enjoyed an afternoon at the beach around the corner and they took Teo to harvest Samphire, which is a really cool superfood (we got a little taste). We very much enjoyed their company and the conversations were lively. We were sad to wave them off, and we are very much looking forward to the next time we meet up!
During the last week we were in Addaya there was a pretty serious forrest fire and we got very lucky that the strong winds kept the direction they did. People were evacuated from the homes around the perimeter and we watched the progress through the night with our hearts in our throats. Our neighbours made cups of tea in the night and the guys checked the status of the firefighting with regular walks up the hill. In the end we just felt very lucky that everything was fine and that the fire fighting heroes got everything under control. We were almost happy to wash the ash off the decks. Dennis let us in on a secret, he has magic Granddad skills and Teo spent hours doing a jigsaw puzzle with him the day the fire was put out.
That evening Dennis and Gwen generously offered to take us to the fiesta in Mahon. We had a really lovely trip which included a parade with Giants and marching bands, Teo dancing around in front of a stage, a stroll through the charming streets of Mahon, pizza and pasta dinner and a trip to the bouncy castle for Teo. It was a wonderful evening and just the break Teo and I needed from all the chores. Jon rested his ankle and got caught up on email and research and so we were ready to go the next day. I don’t even want to think about what we would do without all these lovely people, neighbours in Addaya marina are an incredible bunch of people!
