After a very tearful and busy farewell week in the UK we have now been in Spain for almost 2 weeks!
Wow time has flown!

We have been so busy unpacking boxes and then finding space to put everything. Installing various items such as water purifiers, our new life raft, satellite phones, fridge freezers – and the list goes on, that the days have literally flown past. Shawn has been working so hard on checking engines, reading countless manuals, researching where to purchase parts he needs and then trying to either get them sent to us or collect them, all with very limited Spanish.

The boys have been amazing, mostly entertaining themselves on the dock with various friends, with the odd trip to the beach or shops, and lots of crabbing.

They have become well known at the local “buy anything” shop here in Almerimar, where they like to walk to by themselves to spend their pocket money, sometimes coming back moaning that they have been charged a different price to what was advertised! But have now learnt how to stand up for themselves even in a different language.

We have also already had 2 lots of visitors on board Mokara, which has been fantastic.

The first being some of our oldest and dearest friends the Keddie family, who just happened to be renting a villa close by and were able to come and spend the day with us. It was so lovely to see them and to show them our boat as well as all the plans we have. The kids all went tubing with Shawn and Dave on the Dinghy, whilst Luce and I pondered life sipping G&T’s.

We then also had a surprise visit by one of Nathan’s school friends Harry and his Dad Chris. Having Chris and Harry with us for the past few days has been great. Chris has been a huge help to Shawn helping him lift, move, rewire, reconfigure and troubleshoot various things. All things I would have normally had to do – so thank you Chris. And Harry kept both Nathan and Dylan busy all day and late into the night. I don’t think we sat down to dinner much before 9pm every night, which for my hungry boys is quite something! Harry and Chris had rented an apartment within walking distance from the boat. The best part was it had free wifi and a pool, currently two of the boys very best things. Wifi is like gold to them at the moment as they detox from the limitless wifi we had back home. Dylan can’t yet get his head around why we can’t just get unlimited wifi on the boat. Something he has even volunteered to put his pocket money towards!

I’m sure once we have left the dock and Shawn and I are a little less busy they will crave wifi less. But in the mean time a trip to the coffee shop is met with cheers of “YES – I’ll come with you” – I wonder why!!!

We have made great friends with the boat next door – Kirlana. They are a German family who are setting off at the same time as us to sail around the Med for a year. Its been great as they have 2 kids the same age as ours, so they all spend their days riding up and down the pontoon together. I’m sure all the other boats on our pontoon will be happy to see us leave, and the serenity of their environment return!

Anyway I now need to go hand the keys back for Chris’ apartment and surrender the wifi and air conditioning.

We plan to leave for the Balearic Islands next weekend – weather permitting, where we pick up my brother and his family which we are all very excited for.

But before then there is still a lot to do…