38:46.80N 01:25.60E

Ok here we go then – over 1500 miles to go and it’s finally down to just the two of us. Skipper and she who’s in charge of everything. We’ve been looking forwards to this challenge. Passage making double handed calls for a different set of skills and we’re both up for it. For a start we’ll have to take turns at sleeping. But before we do that we’ll just get used to the two of us managing the boat on a daily basis with sensible night time stops.

We left Chris and David on 2^nd August and almost immediately left behind the concrete jungle of the Costa del Sol. That night saw us as anchored off the small village of Velez-Malaga. We had to share the anchorage with one other boat! What was this? Most of the boats in this neck of the woods clear off to marinas every night

Next night we dropped a hook in the Cala de los Canuelos – a delightful spot We had the bay to ourselves overnight.

It was bliss mooching along the coast at a snail’s pace and pleasing ourselves. All we had to do was keep one eye on the weather so as to find overnight protection and make sure the diary was up to date!

On 4^th August we hit our first anniversary. 4^th August 2009 we left Corfu – 4^th August 2010 we arrived at La Rabita on the Costa del Sol. – 11,359 miles later. Another delightful little town.

This end of the Costa del Sol is all about greenhouses and fruit and vegetable growing with little in the way of commercial tourism.

Ensenada de las Entinas came next – huge long beach – no buildings in sight.

But then the wind said enough of this honeymoon stuff for the lovebirds. Let’s see how the pair of you cope with this! 39 miles later we were dropping a hook in a 35 knot headwind (again!) in the dark (again!) off the village of San Miguel in the lee of Cabo de Gata. (Tarifa Point was still etched in our memories!) Our first real test double handed but it was ok. After all - we’d been through worse double handed when the Bora nearly blew us away in Croatia.

We had to hang around for three nights before the wind eased a little and spent the time watching the windsurfers screaming past the yacht at breakneck speed.  

As soon as possible we rounded Cabo de Gata and ran up the Costa Blanca. The wind was still strong and from the North East so Cala de San Pedro seemed the obvious place to overnight. It quickly became our favourite place so far.

Tiny makeshift accommodations were built into the rocks which you only noticed once you started looking hard. There was no road – just a long tortuous footpath from Las Negras. To enjoy the beach there you either had a long hot walk or arrived by boat.

The place even had a guardian witch at the entrance!

But the wind wasn’t giving up that easily and promptly went South so we had to move on. We found an anchorage protected from the South at Ensenada de la Fuente.

But after 9 days of anchoring out we headed for a tiny marina at Mazarron to get more provisions, find a WIFI site so we could send a blog and have someone else cook the dinner! The local town library came up trumps with WIFI.

Next day the wind was back with a vengeance so we anchored near the village of La Subida in Mazarron bay. The first night was OK but the second brought thunder and lightning and big winds from all directions. The boat swung through 360 degrees at high speed and that broke free the anchor. We started dragging towards a huge yacht that had anchored behind us. Of course by then it was dark but the practice we had at Tarifa Point and Cabo de Gata proved useful. Within minutes we had the anchor up, moved the boat further from other boats and re-laid the anchor.

We stayed in the bay a third night waiting for the wind to ease and finally set off for Formentera – our first real attempt at double handed passage making. Up until then we had just been sailing in daylight hours and anchoring overnight. Formentera was 164 miles away and it took us 41 hours non stop. We left Mazarron bay at 0700 and dropped the anchor off Playa Trocados at midnight the following day. And we crossed the zero meridian and went from degrees west to degrees east in the process.

We were tired but jubilant at having survived our first passage. Friends of ours had sailed all the way across the Atlantic double-handed and we started to appreciate the enormity of what they had achieved. We would have to do longer passages before we got back to Corfu but it felt good with the first one under our belts.