On the Road again 2014

Happy birthday Richard!

Good times...!

Cruising 2014 is upon us before we know it.  We have waved goodbye to our dear friends and winter neighbours from Danilotta and Frati who have gone westwards leaving us with wonderful memories, delicious strawberry jam and advice on how to use silver to purify our water tanks.   Jude and Oliver SY Whistler have gone back to the UK.  Many others have also gone… Doreen and Alan on Kiah are still with us thank goodness.

Wild cherries

Pomegranate flowers

Our last walk in the mountains behind Almerimar is a blaze of colour and amazing light mingled with spring birdsong and flashes of colour in the branches from migrating birds.

Flowers everywhere, bees busily buzzing too...

C’mon Richard!!!!

We say goodbye to the lovely Maria, our gracious and kind 

local support person and friend to cruisers, who organises all these walks.

Pippy has been through the boat, mercilessly culling anything that we don’t use any more.  Weight has to go.  The local animal charity shop is very happy to receive any donations of unwanted clothing or items.  It’s a great opportunity to have a sort out.  Some of it doesn’t make it to the charity shop! Haha!

The boat is packed with elderberry flower cordial, strawberry and wild cherry jam, pickled green walnuts, salted wild capers and almonds still in their shells, fig and ginger jam and many wonderful memories of gathering this stuff to the sound of nightingales in the spring, a bit like a thrush on drugs and very lovely to listen to.  

The dinghy gets some TLC - yes its leaking again!

Despite many good resolutions, we are one of the last boats away from the winter port and are already enjoying the company of our cruising friends on boats from Lagos who have made passage from there to Almerimar this season.  Okay its all downhill from Lagos to here, but we are starting to wonder if we are ever going to get away.  C’mon Richard!  Can we please go now? 

The owner of the sail loft has had an awful accident while kite surfing and is in a coma in hospital.  The inox shop is also one partner down due to ill health.  We spend longer on the hard stand than we intend (3 

weeks) and end up at the bottom of the queue to have our life raft fitted in its new position on the cabin top and sail repairs done.  Not only this but a last minute addition to the bow (a ‘prod’) is commissioned (by Capn Buck) and also an emergency inner forestay.  We are soon on very friendly terms with the rigger, the chandlery and Stuart who by 0800H on Monday 19 May after a week of easterly gales which have held up work does the last of the inox welding on the bow.   

Now fierce south west winds are forecast from tomorrow and we may have missed our weather window to leave.   We are aware that because Almerimar is on a flat plain below a high escarpment, backed by the Sierra Nevada mountain range, wind does accelerate across the region.  We have been watching the weather forecasts further west for some time and there seems to be much less wind along the coast.  Once we get away from here, we believe we can expect more favourable conditions. 

By 1300H Monday 19 May we are all finished and ready to depart Almerimar and conditions are still not too bad although the wind has already turned to the west.  A few people think we have no chance, but we believe we can get well on the way towards Gibraltar, motoring, regretfully not sailing.  We say our goodbyes to remaining friends, throw our lines and motor westwards, hugging the coast and finding the sea quite flat, wind on the nose, coming and going.  The last thing we say to Alan and Doreen SY Kiah who are waving us goodbye is “If we are not back in two hours, we have gone!”  People we see some time afterwards say they wondered how on earth we got away, given the westerly gale conditions Almerimar was soon experiencing.

Flamingos at Almerimar

Around 2200H and just on dark we attempt to go into Marina del Este, having nudged our way 44 NM, still making good progress.  Richard is tired after a busy day but we cannot raise anyone on the VHF so have no option but to continue onwards as the unfamiliar entrance is very narrow and darkness rapidly filling in.    We have a close encounter with a fishing boat not very well lit and are happy to soon be in open waters again.

At 0100H Pippy goes off watch noting that the sea state is changing and may indicate wind on its way.  

At 0200H, soon after we have changed course to the south west (and away from the coast to make a direct line across towards our destination of Marina Fuengarola), conditions worsen considerably, – sea state short and steep and Matelot is slamming the bow down over the waves and corkscrewing sideways at times too.  The freshening SW wind is coming through the Straights of Gib – against the opposing current we are in.  Cap’n Buck reports feeling unwell, maybe seasick.  Pippy, tired and suddenly fearful of what that might mean, tells him he is not allowed to be unwell!  We make a joint decision to scuttle back into the relative shelter of Malaga Bay.  Immediately the boat is more comfortable taking the sea on the side.  We continue along the coast to Benalmadena, arriving 0730H, both still on deck.  There is no one in the office yet so we tie up to the waiting dock beside the office and crash to sleep.  We are woken at 1100H – time to register and go to our berth.  Wind is very fresh now but some very nimble boat driving by Richard gets us parked in a small spot with difficult access.  No windward line is provided to pull us off the boat next door as we crash up against it with all fenders groaning.   We are not greatly happy but stuck there now in a SW gale.  Our fenders take a thrashing over the next day or so.

Within minutes of tying up there are two very nice gentlemen in uniforms wishing to speak with us and examine our passports.  It seems the stamps they find are not quite what they would wish and so we have to jump a bus immediately and travel up to Malaga to their offices to sort it out.  No problem – we are grateful to their people for their courtesy and consideration and soon back on Matelot, sleeping off the night before, fresh visa stamps in our passports.

Social activity is busy here as lots of people stop to chat with us.  It is nice to be so welcome and we appreciate it but are feeling a little dazed. 

Things are now a bit up in the air about where we are heading this season after July, as Richard needs to get the all clear on his psa test before we commit to the Atlantic crossing.  Pippy is stressing over money.  There is a paper trail of receipts for Alamar Chandlery all over our boat.  We could stop a major leak by stuffing them in the hole if necessary.  Pippy is also less confident after the past year of health issues and feels our vulnerability acutely.  We talk about the passage just gone and what we could do differently.  We agree we should both medicate ourselves for the first few days of passage, starting before we set out in future.  The trick is to find a medication which does not make us sleepy.  Pippy is losing some sleep over these issues.  It is nice to have some quiet time to practice ‘all things being considered’.  It all goes into the ‘wait and see’ basket.