We arrived in Marina Park Motril near Motril, Spain. Marina Park is a small family run marina near Granada and Malaga and an ideal spot to view the famous Alhambra palaces and gardens. We had requested that our new Gennaker sail was shipped here from France.
Our gennaker was not ready by the time Chloe was ready to launch as we had requested a custom 'Chloe' Graphic on the sail.
We hadn't wanted to have our Gennaker shipped to Morocco due to the excessive custom's tariffs and custom's storage fees that would have been imposed. Some of our friends had suffered this expensive layer of bureaucracy when attempting to have shipped, maintenance materials to Morocco.
We had picked Marina Park Motril on the recommendation of a friend, as a very friendly, well equipped and helpful marina specializing in helping cruisers and boaters that require to do boat work. It turned out to be an excellent choice. Not only was Marina Park Motril perfectly able to help us, but they turned out to be the friendliest and most helpful marina we had come across to date. A small but expanding marina they are geared up with lots of offerings to visiting cruisers: the use of bikes, the use of a van, a fully functional workshop and boat lifting and scuba facilities with a whole team of technicians and specialists ready to help at short notice. The perfect location for boat projects.
A visit to Alhambra palace make's a pleasant day trip from Martina Park Motril.
Upon arrival, Marina Park Motril staff carried our new gennaker sail down to our boat dropped it on Chloe's deck.
Gennaker Installation Video:
A Garcia 45 is fitted with a pad-eye strong point on the tip of the bow, or the Bow Sprit. This stainless steel fitting may be used to fit a continuous furling drum; either with the use of a tack line or directly with a simple shackle. We had also requested a Gennaker Halyard be fitted onto Chloe before we left Cherbourg.
We attached the bottom-up Furler's swivel to the Gennaker Halyard...... it then couples to the head of the sail.
Our Gennaker package included a sail, a Factor FX+ 4500 continuous line furling drum and line along with a few hardware fittings.
Doubled up Tack line installed.
We spent a bit of trial and error figuring out the best place to install the continuous furling line's route and also the best height of the furling drum.
We decided to run the continuous furling line straight through the Granny bars and though a double block, shackled to a pad eye on the salon roof.
Some nuts & bolts, a cam cleat and a pad eye secured the block and the line at the cockpit end of the furling line. Here the fiberglass 'lid' is solid.
We routed our sheets on the outside of the boat, back to a pair of sheet blocks; held to the boat by two short Dyneema loops.
We slowly hauled up the Gennaker and then carefully furled it up to check it's operation. We placed it into its bag and then repeated the same exercise at battle speed.
Here's Chloe's Gennaker up .... at the Motril dock side.
Once up, we adjusted the Tack line length to prevent any Chafe potential and added a fairlead to keep the continuous furling line out of any trouble. And, marked our Gennaker halyard with a Sharpy.
All good. Mission Accomplished... Chloe's Beady Eyes are Watching!
Next step is to test it out on the water.... just as soon as the Corona virus allows...
We would like to express our Sincere Thanks to the good folks of Marina Park Motril for all their support and generosity that they have shown us during the Corona virus state of emergency in Spain. We will be back to bug your guys for sure and we hope to meet you all again soon, perhaps in other places..!
