F1 Aftermath

Valencia was a very cool city, lots of good restaurants and bars a short walk from the marina and even more a short tram ride away.  The marina was a bit isolated, but for the purpose of watching the race it could not have been better.  We had a relatively good view from the balcony that at the end of our pontoon and we watched the start of the race from there, seeing 20 cars roaring down the straight and into turn 9 from less than 100m was pretty spectacular!  From there we headed down to track side where we could get a closer look through some gaps in the fence, that is of course unless you are Jack who, along with 15 other people, found a gap and snuck though to get with in about 5m of the track!  We found the best place to watch it was from up the mast, which was easily high and close enough to see over all of the other boats, stands and various camera cranes!  

View from the balcony.

View from up the mast.

Looking down on the boat.

Needless to say there were plenty of places to party, both the night before the race and the night of the race.  I won't, and probably legally can't, post all of the debauchery that happened over the 72 hours that Matt, Jim and Jack were with us, however some of the highlights and it seems SOP when Jim is involved were: Jim deciding our 6 person dinghy could take 8 and nearly sinking it, when being told by the Guardia that lights are required at night on the dinghy Matt promptly pulling out his phone and activating the flash,  me getting a lift back from the club on the back of a Guarida motorbike round the track and Jacks incredible, but very dangerous dancing!  I think our saving grace was Carol's amazing ability to keep us all vaguely in line, with out her there I am sure we would have managed to sink the boat or get put in jail!  I have debated whether to post any photos of the various partying antics and have decided that it's probably best not to for everyones sake! So instead below you will find a photo of the main culprit, and place of blame for anything irresponsible that happend over the weekend, Starking at the top of the mast.  Incidentally he also managed to coin the phrase Starking which has now been accepted into the Urban Dictionary, so if you are interested in its meaning go to www.urbandictionary.com. 

After the race they opened up the track and we thought it would be rude not to take the scooters for a spin round it.  We also, surprisingly, managed to stay relatively sober on the Monday night which enabled us to go for a sail on Tuesday.  It may seem strange to some, but that was actually the first time since the start of the trip that we just went out for a sail.  We obviously do a lot of sailing, but it is all in aid of getting somewhere, it was very refreshing just to go out for the purpose of sailing!  On the way back we anchored off the beach outside the marina and went for a much needed swim, the whole weekend the temperature didn't drop below 32C.  Crazy Jack, who was yet to make a proper appearance, was suddenly awoken and repeatedly hurled himself from the bow in any nature of spin he could muster!  

 Jack in the pits.

Matt on turn 8.

Crazy Jack inverted.

It was a great weekend and I would highly recommend anyone with a boat near Valencia to get it booked for next year, we found that the price of the marina for 7 days over the F1 weekend to be cheaper than we are paying in most of the other marinas further up the coast!  We are now further up towards Barcelona, where we are planning on wintering the boat.  So far we have stopped at Pobla, Burriana and Castellon, but I'll blog about those in another post!