What a week!! We have finally sailed out of Motril harbour and arrived in Fuengorola tonight at 10.00pm 36.32N  4.36W – everything went really well until just one hour from our destination when the new pulley fell of the water pump and shredded the belts….. Luckily Vic heard the change in engine noise immediately and disaster was averted – the reason?  The engineers hadn’t bedded in the cir clip or done the bolts up tight enough….. we fixed it all at sea, so glad it was a calm evening. 

Almunecar has experienced the worst weather and torrential rain for 40 years and consequently the two rivers either side, the Rio Seco and the Rio Verde, flash flooded, burst and joined actually in Almunecar town so trees, roots, fruit, vegetables, cars, motor bikes, debris and earth all cascaded through and into the sea.  Absolute devastation with some loss of life………. And today we have literally sailed through these trees, roots, branches and thick mud on our journey to Fuengorola……..

We are glad we stayed in Motril after all – Solviento have made a great job of the stainless steel framework for the bimini and cockpit hood.  In the midst of last week, we celebrated Oscar’s 18^th birthday, collected most of the medical kit which has all been stowed and re labelled as all the instructions are in Spanish and we now resemble a hospital ship setting off to the third world – the defribulator and oxygen are on order!  Paul has secured the life raft to the deck, the lee cloths to all the bunks, the twistle rig poles to the stanchions, hoisted the newly repaired sails (still one hole in the main which will have to be returned) and I have been to the top of the mast in a boson’s chair to release a jammed halyard.  The cars are sold, the hire car returned, the excess baggage removed, the hard bottomed dinghy replaced, the davits strengthened and so forth and so on and on and on……

Tomorrow we hope to come out of the water to tackle the pressure wash and anti fouling.  22 days until the start of the Rally get together in Gibraltar and time is running out…. Especially we need to put all this new gear into action and try out the SSB radio etc……….