When we bought our Lagoon 570 in Spain the legal hurdles of actually purchasing it was not at the forefront of our mind. As we boarded our plane to go and pick up our new home, it was time to hatch a plan.
With the help of the broker, a specialist export lawyer and good old Mr Google we had finally got a plan of action on how we were going to export the boat, re register, reflag, and re import the boat temporarily into the EU. What a palaver, the up side was we got a lot of sailing in our first two weeks of proud ownership. (500 miles).
We arrived at 11pm on our boat called JOVA, by 11am the following day we had done a grocery shop, checked the generator, put in some reefing lines and started up the engines and casted off on phase 1 of our mission.
Wow this lady could sail - with a following sea we just ate up the miles and time for some relaxing on the bean bag!
160 miles of pure joy, we could not stop smiling. The washing up liquid stayed upright and we touched 17 kts.... normally cruising between 7 and 10 kts. This was fun.
By the time we arrived in Almerima we were all fired up to get on with some fixing. Everything that was not working was evicted - fridge, freezer, washing machine, hot water tanks, 4 alternators, running rigging, bilge pumps ..... the list goes on and on..... the mission had begun!. John was in fighting form and in 24 hours we had running hot water, a flushing toilet and a lot of aching muscles as we had heaved a very heavy washing machine out....
This had involved halyards through hatches, a plank, a lot of measuring, and a very large dose of determination... celebrated with and a lovely cool beer, or two! at 7pm....
After three days of organising rigging parts, cockpit enclosure repairs, and a lot of research on engine and boat parts, we placed our order at the local chandleryyand it was time to head to Malaga to check out of Spain, export the boat legally and head for Gibralter.
Malaga port control could not have been more helpful in directing us to the customs dock... We motored past it several times, we could not believe they wanted us to berth in a cruse liner space.
Unfortunately we were greeted by blue flashing lights and a rather stern looking Spanish police man who accused us of not paying some navigation licence fee several months ago.
He stood guard while we rang our lawyer and the boker, who quickly seemed to sort things out. From then onwards the process was very smooth and within a couple of hours we were heading for Gibraltar with the required export papers in hand:) Joline, legally exported, registered in the UK was born.....
It was during this passage when John took a tumble down the forward hatch, ouch... fortunately nothing broken but:
a) a very bruised leg and knee which was very painful and swollen for the next few weeks.
b) a big reminder how easy it is to cause yourself damage on boat and
c) our medical kit was woefully lacking, not even a ice pack!. - Now top of our priority list.
We rounded "The Rock" just after dark and enjoyed a spendid few days in Gibraltar.
It certainly is very British - and the history was fascinating. We loved the tunnels - 24 miles of them...., and of course the monkies. Due to Johns leg we purchased a couple of electric scooters so that we could get around easily. What a boom they have turned out to be as we have used them every land based day, great fun and highly effective when on a refit mission.
Next stop back to Almerimar to re rig, new alternators and more fixing...hopefully.
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