Harriette - Costa Del Sol
Hello World,
Harriette has a slight change of timetable, but before I come to that I'll update you with
what we've been doing since we left Gibraltar on 6th June.
Rounding Europa point (the tip of Gibraltar) at 1pm the winds got up very strongly, and
with wind against tide it was very choppy indeed, but we nevertheless managed to get round
with 2 reefs without resorting to the engine.
Then we were called up on the VHF and asked to consider if we were not coming too close to
another boat. As we were nowhere near any other boats we queried this and the call turned
out to be for another boat with a similar name to Harriette. By 4pm the wind dropped to
force 2 and we resorted to the engine.
Sotogrande was our first marina in the Med proper. It was very pleasant, upmarket and
hence very expensive (over 6,000 ptas per night) so we only stayed one night.
We moved on to Duquesa, where they were noisily dredging the entrance, then to Estepona,
then Fuengirola, where it was so full that we had to spend the night on the waiting
pontoon and move on to Benalmadena.
Benalmadena is a massive marina with hundreds of restaurants, ice cream booths and tourist
shops in the heart of the Costa del Sol. Unfortunately they were nearly full so we had to
berth (stern-to as usual) near the south-facing entrance.
I had started to build a pasarela (Spanish name for a fancy gang-plank) so that we could
easily get on and off in all these stern-to berths that we were encountering. It had to be
finished in time for my parents' arrival on Friday afternoon, 15th June. I managed to fit
the wheels for the shore end AND the pivot for the boat end and just had time to try it
before shooting off to Malaga airport.
Unfortunately the swell had got up during the day (from the south of course) and Harriette
was tossing around and trying to kiss the quayside with her bathing platform with every
wave. I managed to jam the pasarela against a kerb on my first attempt to try it, just as
Harriette came back for another run at the quay. The compression force broke the planking
a foot from the end. In a frenzy of drill and saw I reinforced and repaired the planking.
On the second trial the shore end dropped down a few inches, off the edge of the quay, as
Harriette lunged away, then back again, this time breaking the wheels clean off.
Miraculously nothing was lost into the water.
Too late to do anything except ask Jo to stay and keep moving the fenders as necessary,
while I sped off to the airport. Mum and Dad had to use the pasarela without wheels. Just
when I thought things couldn't get worse Harriette rammed the darn pasarela against the
water/electricity supply pillar and broke the pivot mechanism off the inboard end. Not a
good start for a parental visit, but worse was to come.
After we'd said goodnight at midnight, the swell caught Dad off balance in the dorway to
the heads and he gently slid to the floor slicing the palm of one hand very deeply on the
sharp edge of the catch of the door. We patched this up and, after 2 subsequent visits to
the doctor the hand is healing well, although perhaps it should have been stitched
straight away.
In spite of this inauspicious start Mum & Dad coped well.
We drove to Gibraltar (monkeys, St Michael's cave, etc) on Saturday. We got lost in a
rabbit warren of a housing estate on the way back, and were escorted out by a police car!
Then a perfect, gentle sailing day during which we sailed out 4 miles and back to give my
parents a taste of sailing (and to empty the holding tanks), since they had never sailed
on the open sea before. No problems.
On Monday we toured the sierras between Antequera, Ronda and the Cost del Sol, looking for
the famous White Villages (in the wrong place as it happens).
By Tuesday the swell was too bad to even get off the boat, even with the pasarela
repaired, so we stayed and played Rumikub in the cockpit instead!
On Wednesday we sailed, or rather motored in 5 knots of wind, past Malaga to Puerto Caleta
de Velez, where the weather was much kinder to us and the jetty so low that we
didn't need the pasarela. On this trip we overheard on the VHF radio a frigate on a UN
excercise firing 3 warning shots across the bows of a Spanish boat which would not answer
his questions, but I can't tell you about that becasue it's against the rules to relate
stuff heard on the VHF. Not sure if the frigate carried out its threat to fire AT the
Spanish boat because the radio reception went bad at that time.
A visit to the Alhambra in Granada completed my parents' visit.
Next Jo & I moved on to the tiny, and very pretty Marina del Este. We happened to
arrive the day after a drama there. Apparently the chap running it had been salting away
most of the takings (allegedly) for a couple of years and the Guardia Civil had come down
the day before and closed the place down, but not before the dodgy boss had taken away
most of the useful and valuable items, including the records, and cut off the electricity.
By the time we arrived the next day they had called in staff from a company that
runs a chain of marinas, to take over the running of this one. The staff were tearing
their hair out trying to cope with the ensuing chaos, not knowing which berths were vacant
for visiting yachts and which ones the owners would be returning to soon.
We met Richard here, who is buying an appartment, and he took us to Nerja to see the caves
- full of stalactites, etc.
We are now in Aguadulce, 4 miles before Almeria. Yesterday we visited the Alcazaba
(Moorish castle) in Almeria and a mini theme park called Mini Hollywood, based on an
American outback village set, where parts of several westerns were filmed. They also have
a zoo.
Tomorrow we plan to move on towards Cartegena, where we will spend about a week and see
some more Spanish friends.
We'll probably leave Cartagena on about Monday, 9th July, do a few day hops northwards,
then cross to Formentera or Ibiza - a long day crossing. Then we'll do Mallorca and
Menorca.
We want to cross back to the mainland (Tarragona or Barcelona) by about 6th August, to
meet up with some friends in Barcelona over the weekend of 9th to
13th August.
After Barcelona we'll make our way along the south coast of France. After that we're not
sure. Maybe Corsica and Sardinia or maybe Italy. In any case we need to find a good
harbour for the winter. Tunisia is still a possibility.
Fair winds & On-On,