Almerimar and beyond
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Approaching mainland
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
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 ·
watched the · 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 · 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
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…!
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
DRACO’s open-plan porthole and flexible deck arrangement. Since leaving
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’
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
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
Sunset from the anchorage in |
