Approaching mainland Spain after Africa, our first port of call in
Europe was Almerimar, a large marina and
holiday resort, set against a backdrop of plastic. The scale of the horticulture
to provide cheap strawberries and such like to Tesco and Sainsbury’s is huge –
so huge that the plastic sheeting that stretches from the foot of the mountains
to the beach looks like a covering of snow from a distance. Nancy and David were
waiting to greet us as we arrived.
The Costa del Plastic.
Almerimar marina.
As we are now committed to at least a couple of
years mooring bows-to in the Med’ and me doing tightrope walking tricks between
the bow and the shore, we decided to buy a second-hand passarelle (a gangplank
with wheels on one end and a rope handrail to one side; no, the spellchecker
doesn’t know how to spell it either, and it isn’t in the Concise Oxford
Dictionary, Tenth Edition, Revised), so we got the local steel fabricators to
make up a bracket to attach it to our bow roller. Falling off passarelles
appears to be a national pastime here – usually the fall is onto the concrete
pontoon before hitting the murky marina waters, just how are the bruised
buttocks, David (ONS JOOL)?
If you haven’t eaten it – it doesn’t go down the loo
The holding tank continues to play up, emptying
without problems one minute, then (when we aren’t looking), it backs itself up,
smelling and bulging threateningly. We have now reached the point of if you
haven’t eaten it – it doesn’t go down the loo. The crisis point was reached when
(on the hottest day so far – 30 degrees Celsius), it blocked again, and we spent
the day unblocking it, emptying it – Lakeland baby bucket by Lakeland baby
bucket – before reaching the baby wipe that one little boy eventually admitted
to having flushed down it. It’s amazing how much pressure there is in that ‘out’
pipe with the pressure of a full holding tank 1 metre above!
The Lakeland baby bucket comes to the rescue
again!
I just wish you could smell
this…
Eric the Fridge and other
activities
Being fed up of not being able to store the boat
properly (particularly having to eat left-over curry for breakfast as we can't
keep it cool, as well as having to drink warm beer), we finally gave in and
ordered a fridge unit. A simple action you might think, but not without fallout.
Where – exactly – am I supposed to put the stash of spare loo rolls, Christmas
decorations and two holdalls of books that used to live in the ‘fridge’ locker?
The fridge unit arrived and Eric the Fridge fitted it. Did it work? Of course it
didn't! A replacement unit was ordered.
So, while we waited for the replacement fridge
unit to arrive we kept ourselves busy:
·
attending the bonfires on the beach for the St John’s Eve celebrations
(which Beth, Bryn and I attended in Ireland last year) – apparently the
whole of the Spanish coast is lit up with bonfires giving an outline of the
Spanish coast that can be seen from space
·
watched the Spain v
Germany footie match with Nancy,
Johan and Christine
·
snorkelling off the harbour mole with Johan and
Christine
·
enjoying a local fiesta (select Medieval affair, mainly food, win and
wine... it would have been a shame not to try everything)
·
4th of July celebrations with Nancy on ONS JOOL
·
work
for me, bits of school for the kids, and the usual boat maintenance in an exotic
location in high temperatures with flies trying to help for
David
·
celebrating birthdays – David’s and Johan’s.
We joined Johan and Christine for a day exploring
the area, mooching around the film sets used in the Spaghetti Westerns shot in
this area of Spain in the 1960s, driving through a
barren landscape of arid desert, rocky outcrops, gorges and caves, and climbing
the castle at Taberna.
Spaghetti Western panorama (I like these panorama
shots – they make me look tall and slim – which, of course, I
am).
Hellooooooo…..
The ‘stone’ walls of this miner’s shack were made
of sackcloth and plaster.
Rocky outcrops in a barren
landscape.
We drove east as far as Cabo de Gata and swam in
poetic turquoise water.
The lighthouse at Cabo de Gata.
The needle-sharp rocks at the base of Cabo de
Gata. The reason its there I suppose.
Specialist teas in the Medieval food festival in
Almerimar.
Date and almond ‘cake’ – nearly a metre in
diameter!
Medieval shoe shop salesman “Yes, madam, we have
your size in a choice of three colours – light brown, mid-brown or dark
brown”.
Bryn and Bethany try their hand at archery; Beth
of course practiced with the ‘air bow’ before being let loose with the real
thing.
The children bought themselves wooden swords (for
pirate capers) at the fiesta and set to decorating them. We will be the best
equipped pirates in the Med’!
Sword-and-pontoon-decorating
workshop.
We celebrated David’s birthday with a chocolate
mousse cake, chocolate and bubbles. He had bubbles from Bryn and a back massager
from Beth. I couldn’t decide whether to give him a blow-up killer whale or Amy
Winehouse – Amy won, so at least we have some new music on the
boat!
How old?!!!!! (We had the numbers as 54 but he
noticed….)
Still some puff left in the old boy
then…!
Bethany’s ‘Moon rising
over sea’ in chalk pastels for David’s birthday card.
DRAGO threatens to sink us at the dead of
night
DRACO, the boat next door to us, wasn’t in good
shape when we arrived and was lying lower in the water with each day that
passed. We came back late one evening (sort of 1 am-ish) to find her leaning on
us – heavily. We knew things were serious when her resident cockroaches started
to abandon ship – in our direction! We kept them at bay by spraying Baygone
(effective stuff, therefore not available in the UK) on the decks
while we argued with the marineros who weren’t prepared to move the wreck in the
dark. Eventually we persuaded them to let us move, so we scuttled off to a
temporary berth among the big boats, moving again the next day to a new berth on
a hammerhead with a much nicer view.
DRACO’s open-plan porthole and flexible deck
arrangement.
Goodbye Walker Bay – hello
fridge!
Since leaving Portugal, we just haven’t been getting the use
out of the Walker
Bay, so had decided to sell
her and use our dinghy instead. Luckily, hanging around in Almerimar for so long
enabled us to put the word around and we managed to find a buyer – just in time
to use the cash to pay for the fridge. The replacement fridge unit arrived and
was fitted – we had cold orange juice at breakfast! The fridge has been
christened Eric, in honour of Eric the Fridge.
The luxury of cold orange juice for breakfast –
cheers Eric!
Crow’s nests and water
fights
We were sharing our new berth with a wooden boat
complete with rat lines (‘ladders’ running up the rigging) and a crow’s nest.
TOFTEVAAG is an Earthwatch boat, involved in turtle tagging and whale and
dolphin research. Luckily, she also had Claudia and Christina on board who were
up for a few pirate battles and water fights. Luckily, Beth and Bryn just
happened to have freshly decorated pirate swords to try out…
TOFTEVAAG (the water on the pontoon is the from
water fight No 1).
Climbing the rat lines to get to the crow’s
nest.
The water rats on pontoon No
3.
Ready to leave – at
last!
We were ready to leave at last, but the wind, of
course, was blowing from the east (where we wanted to go). We also had a
deadline to meet (the start of the Helena & Jenny Balearics Tour 2008) in
Palma, Mallorca, a few short days and a mere 340 miles away…
Islas Balearics here we
come!
As we set off the wind dropped, so we motored on,
and on, and on. The first night David caught a 2 metre swordfish – a glittering
silver blue affair – but it threw the hook as he got it along side the second
time. We motored on, and on, and on. No wind isn’t good for sailing but it is
good for wildlife and we saw more Loggerhead turtles, Common Bottlenose dolphin,
and Long-finned Pilot whales. The second night of the passage we caught another
swordfish… You have to imagine the next bit as I didn’t have the camera handy to
take a photo for the blog (or a spare hand to use it with) – David in just his
underpants and a plastic cricket-box-type arrangement that the fishing rod
handle fits into, swearing like a trooper trying to reel in 500 metres of line
with a stonking great frightened fish on it, me running around naked apart from
my Crocs and a gaff (I was off-watch and asleep when the line paid out), and the
children running around with torches and a bottle of whisky (to pour on the
fish’s gills). We ended up with 1.7 metres of swordfish – we ate loads of it,
but eventually it went off (there was just too much and we couldn't freeze it
all fast enough), so now our sparkly new fridge smells very
fishy!
Our stonking great swordfish (note the nice red
‘squidy’ Lawrence…)
1.7 metres of swordfish, to be
exact.
We arrived in Formentera and spent a night
anchored in 4 metres of clear blue water before pushing on to Palma to meet Helena and
Jenny.
Formentera coming into view.
Anchored in 4 metres of crystal water over sand
(the turquoise bit) and weed (the dark stuff) in Formentera.
The forecast for our passage from Formentera to
Mallorca was not wonderful, but we managed to get to the mouth of Palma Bay
before the weather hit us (the wind went from 5 knots to 30 knots in
half-an-hour), and it took us 5 hours to do the last 6 miles. Luckily by the
time it got light the wind had dropped off and we were able to see where we were
anchoring.
Beth driving.
Leaving Formentera and Ibiza behind.
Sunset from the anchorage in Palma Bay.
