37 01N 01 42W

Osprey
John Bowering
Thu 29 Jul 2010 07:56
Lindsay Dove joined John on board on Monday 24th July having had a whole new
experience of life with EasyJet which along with the usual hassles
compounded by Gatwick's inability to organise anything much at the south
terminal was one and a half hours late arriving at Almeria. Our driver, also
John, was there to collect him and he was on board for about 1100. We made a
quick excursion to the supermarket to collect Lindsay's special needs and
then headed off for Long Spanish lunch to give Lindsay an opportunity to get
his EasyJet experience aired and off his chest! There is no doubt that the
combination of Gatwick and EasyJet creates a whole new definition of Cattle
Class.

The wind was going to be against us on the following day but Lindsay
nevertheless decided we should make the effort to get further along the
coast. We were clear of Almeria by 0800 on Tuesday morning and were
immediately bashing head on into a 2 metre sea and this only got worse as
the day wore on. Lindsay was not impressed.. Even at 2000 rpm we could only
make three knots against wind and sea. By 1400 we were shipping green water
and the boat was covered in salt. We headed for San Jose which is a small
fishing harbour come marina and eventually arrived there at 1900. The
entrance is narrow and we had no idea if they would have a berth for us but
it was that or spend the night hove too in heavy seas. In the 30 knot wind
we had to power hard through the entrance to maintain steerage way and were
ably to turn hard left onto the fuel berth. Whilst we were doing this a
marinero pointed us at another berth about 40 metres away and we pulled off
the fuel berth and had to swing around in the entrance, leave the harbour
and have another go. We made it onto the berth OK and were soon tied up and
turned to washing the salt off the boat. We decided we would have to remain
for the following day to wait for the wind to die down and then leave early
on Thursday morning. San Jose turned out to be very smell and idyllic - only
Spanish people but they all seem to turn out late at night to eat in the
small waterside restaurants. Of course, we joined them and had a lot of fun.
When we examined the small marina in daylight we were suppressed at how
small it was. If there had been no berth we could probably not had turned
Osprey around in the prevailing winds to leave again. On Thursday morning at
0600 we reversed our without difficulty in calm conditions and headed off
for Cartagena. Little or no wind so the engine is clocking up more hours and
we are presently motor sailing at 6.5 knots. We should get to Cartagena late
this afternoon and will spend a day having a look around as we are told it
is a beautiful historic city.

Lindsay is loving the weather and clam sea today and just commented - "what
more could you ask for -sun, sea and no wives to nag you"!