It was just over 2 years ago that we were last in Almerimar as we made our way east into the Med http://blog.mailasail.com/cape/59. Looking back at the photos in that blog it’s amazing to see how much Beth and Bryn have grown!

 

Anchors and batteries

We had a few boat jobs to do in Almerimar. The first one was to get a new anchor. Armed with a straight edge on dry land, it was possible to see that we had twisted the Delta when we got it wedged in Portinatx – it wasn’t much of a twist but it was obviously enough to stop it digging and setting in properly. We left the mangled one with the engineers to try to straighten out and we ordered a replacement (a 20 kg Delta). We’ll keep the straightened one as (another) spare.

 

We have been having trouble with our domestic batteries since we arrived in the Balearics and have been spending more time at anchor. They were taking longer and longer to charge up (with the engine or generator) and by now were never reaching full capacity – we were running at a scary 50% most of the time. We can’t complain – they have been in use since we put CAPE in the water in 2006 so we have had 4 years of use out of them. David had checked the batteries individually when we got to Almerimar; we had 1 that was still OK, and 5 that were basically dead. However, it isn’t good practice (so I learned) to change just 1 or 2 batteries – it has to be all of them (typical!); for us this meant changing 6 domestic batteries – at an estimated total cost 1200.00 EUROS. Luckily Paul and Hilary happened to see an advert for ‘slightly used’ deep-cycle batteries about half-an-hour’s drive from Almerimar. The batteries turned out to be TeleCom backup batteries for mobile phone aerials (to provide uninterrupted power if the mains power failed), which are replaced every 45 months regardless of whether they’ve been used or not. At a cost of 65 EUROS each (rather than the 200+ EUROS we expected to have to pay) we ended up with 6. Even better news was that they fitted into the existing battery boxes so there was no major woodwork to be done to install them. No doubt snippets will appear here in the blog if they don’t work out...

 

Meeting up with ALEXINA

Fabienne, Christophe, Antoine and Paul (LONPAUL) had told us to look out for a boat called ALEXINA, which was home to 10-year-old Tiger, and her mum and dad (Helen and Peter). Peter tracked us down and Tiger, Beth and Bryn had a great time on the beach, scooting, catching frogs and playing Nintendo. Hopefully we’ll bump into them again further west.

 

Bethany, Bryn and Tiger.

 

Troglodyte adventure

Rosie/Linda (an old friend of Hilary and Paul’s) works in Almerimar, but has a cave house in the town of Cuevas del Campo in the Gaudix region (east of Granada) and we were invited to go and stay. Rosie lent us a car and we followed her (in a van with Hilary, Paul, and another Paul) up into the mountains. We wound our way upwards, past the Western film sets that we had visited 2 years ago and into the semi-desert Altiplano region of Andalucia, backed by the Sierra Nevada (which still had snow on some of its peaks!). It was very, very hot away from the coast, and it got even hotter the higher we went. The fan on the car engine gave up after about 2 hours and we stopped to let it cool down and to top up the water in the radiator. B, B and I picked almonds from a tree at the side of the road.

 

Eventually we came over a ridge and looked down onto the deep blue of the Negratin Reservoir. We stopped for a beer and tapas overlooking the lake, and then went for a swim to cool off. After swimming in sea water for the past 3 years, it was really weird swimming in fresh water; you don’t float as easily for a start and the water feels totally different on your skin!

 

The Negratin Reservoir; cool fresh water in a semi-desert setting.

 

Rosie has two adjoining cave houses; she recently put a passage between the two and extended them (with a jackhammer). The bathrooms and kitchens are at the front and are the bits that she’s currently working on; the bedrooms and living rooms extending backwards into the rock are pretty much complete. It was wonderfully cool in the cave, but not at all damp. Caves are (according to David-the-architect) extremely well insulated against cold in the winter and heat in the summer, maintaining a stable temperature of about 20°C. David measured up Rosie’s extensions and blew the cobwebs off MicroStation to update the plans for her using CAD when we got to Almerimar.

 

Some of the cave houses have proper house fronts (this is the front of one of Rosie’s).

 

Other cave houses are more ‘rustic’.

 

B&B in their cave bedroom.

 

Cosy cave living room with fireplace but no windows.

 

Cave bedroom...

 

...and office.

 

Cave loo and stone bath/shower.

 

Cave kitchen (work in progress), and there is an outside kitchen with BBQ area too.

 

We BBQ’d and chatted well into the night.

 

As Rosie only needed one vehicle back in Almerimar, we piled into the back of it for the journey back down to sea level. Luckily it was a transit van, complete with a mattress on the floor and cool box in the corner. It was a bit like a mobile sauna, so we all stripped down to our underwear. It was downhill on the way back and didn’t take long!

 

In the back of the mobile sauna (that reminds me, I must buy some new bras when we get to Gib).

 

Fast boats and waterskis

Back in Almerimar, David and Bryn ventured out with Rosie, Hilary and Paul to give waterskiing a try. Apparently Hilary got up, but no-one else got out of the water for long as the borrowed skis were professional stunt skis and probably not the best type for a first attempt.

 

Rosie, Hilary and Paul in PEGGY.

 

“Are you ready Bryn? Keep your legs together...”

 

Rosie and (the other) Paul.

 

Rolling our way west

Adra was just a short hop (15 miles) west from Almerimar, and we caught a small dorado on the way (our first Dorado). There is a new marina under construction in the town quay area, so we tried to go alongside the acres of unused fishing dock inside the harbour but the port police weren’t having any of that. We ended up anchored outside the harbour. The town itself is very Spanish and a refreshing change from touristy Almerimar.

 

Dorado for tea.

 

Beth and Mandie by the lead shot tower in Adra.

 

By 02:30 it was still so rolly in the anchorage that we gave up trying to sleep, upped anchor and set off for La Herradura, a large bay reminiscent of some of the calas in the Balearics. We anchored here for 1 night.

 

One of the locals tying up to swimmer buoy and cranking up their BBQ.

 

TENGY at anchor in La Herradura.

 

Our next stop was Benalmadéna. David had towed a Mississippi paddle steamer (WILLOW) by tug from Alfred Dock in Liverpool to Benalmadéna soon after we met, so we waved at that as we came past the harbour breakwater. It was a restaurant and bar for many years apparently but appeared to be all closed up now.

 

The Mississippi paddle steamer, WILLOW.

 

We anchored west of the harbour, but this anchorage was also really rolly – there just isn’t any way of getting out of the swell in a coast like this with no indentations! Mandie and Mike managed to get a berth in the marina, but as they didn’t have any room left for us, we ended up rafting up to PAX who were alongside the reception pontoon.

 

From PENDULUM to MOOJADI to CAPE

The skipper of one of the catamaran charter boats called across as he was passing us in the channel and asked if CAPE was a Gitana 43 – it was quite exciting for us to meet someone who actually knew that such a boat existed and to recognise it given that so few were ever made! It turns out that his family had owned CAPE and he had learned to sail on her as a boy. Jim, Sue and their son Jay (the catamaran skipper) came for a look around the next morning. Jim and Sue stayed for a coffee and filled us in on CAPE’s history, showing us photos from when she came out of the mould up until they sold her on. We knew that she had been built in South Africa in 1981 and had originally been named PENDULUM. It was great to learn a bit more about her; she was raced by the first owner and a professional crew led by the famous South African skipper, Bertie Reed, in races such as Cape Town to Rio, and Durban to Mauritius. Jim and Sue bought her from the original owners when she was 7 years old and changed her name to MOOJADI (which means WHITE WITCH). They raced her in South Africa, lived on her for 5 years and then sailed her from South Africa to the UK (where they changed her name to CAPE), before eventually selling her on to Brian Hall Thomas who we bought her from.

 

Estepona

Our next stop was the anchorage off Crystal Beach in Estepona. Even though we kedged (laid an anchor out behind to try to keep our bow to the swell), we rolled so much that sleep was almost impossible the first night. The next afternoon the wind got up to about 20 kts, increasing the pitching and rolling, making swimming off the boat dangerous and sleep even less likely, so we abandoned the anchorage and went into the marina for 2 nights. We had no expectations of Estepona but were pleasantly surprised at its wide streets, whitewashed buildings, tiled squares and mixture of Moroccan and Spanish people and shops. The town is set on a hill and we walked to the upper end (in the hottest part of the day, of course) and could see Morocco and our next stop – Gibraltar – in the distance.