in the delightful square
Aguilas
The weather forecast was for strong winds from the NE, and during the night we had indeed experienced some very strong gusts. Bu the morning, we were lying to a very light westerly breeze, and I questioned whether the forecasters had got their sums completely wrong. I didn't like the fact that our anchor was not set, and decided that we should if possible move on. As the Frenchman next door recovered his anchor to go to the yard for a lift out, he did observe that it was a bit rough in the entrance to the harbour. I convinced myself that this was just a local sea in the (not so) shallow entrance left over from the night before.
That was how we set off into an ENE Force 5-6 towards the NE, possibly Cartagena?
It is fair to say that Mo did not really enjoy it much, but she let me get on with the job of working the boat to windward. We went inshore to try to pick up some lee, with some success, and were sailing on quite fast albeit on our ear a bit. Gradually the wind picked up during the day to F7. It was obvious we were not going to make good progress, and so very soon the objective became Aguilas, the nearest place with any shelter. The microwave decided to get restless, and was attempting to make an exit from its shelf, with the result that the turntable ejected and burst into a myriad of small glass splinters. It was at this point that Mo discovered that on starboard tack the water was welling up in the galley sinks, and spilling over the back. We had never bothered before to turn off the seacock.
When we got in that afternoon, we had logged 37 miles and made good 18.5 miles, at an average of about 5 knots. We anchored on the east side of the bay where there was plenty of room and some lee from a hill. The marina again looked very small, and we did not fancy the fishing harbour. We then had to set about washing and drying the contents of the galley cupboards. Unfortunately the biscuits and spaghetti never quite recovered and had to be thrown out!
While we were charging the batteries with the generator, Mo smelt a hot smell and immediately shut down the generator. On re-starting it, an alarm sounded and it shut itself down. So we decided that we had better investigate, but first re-anchored in shallower water to try to keep out of the swell that was wrapping around the rocks outside us. Having fought our way in to the generator, by emptying Mo's extensive drystore locker above it, we found that all the usual suspects, cooling water and oil seemed in order. We were thus running the generator under load to see what happened when acrid smoke began to pour out, not from the generator, but from the floor under the batteries. We shut down, grabbed a fire extinguisher, and gingerly lifted the boards to investigate. We suspected that the culprit might be our charger/inverter system. The remote control to this appeared to be working, but it was not delivering any voltage to our 230v. systems. Neither did it when the generator was powered up! This was a major disaster, as we are so reliant on it for our navigation by laptop as well as our comforts.
It was still blowing hard, and we did not get off the boat. We did finally tackle the rigging of our 'Aquair' wind/water generator in its air configuration. We had acquired this from Mike after his trip on Jemmana. We christened him Willie, as we wondered 'Will he ... generate anything?'
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| Mo's birthday celebration in the delightful square Aguilas |
Aguilas is a pleasant town overlooked by a castle that is currently undergoing renovation work. We stopped for a drink in the very attractive central square, and went into the church afterwards, before visiting the supermarket.
We gave up on the anchoring, and went into the marina where we were shown to a berth. We decided to go ashore to celebrate Mo's birthday, and found that only one restaurant was really doing any business. So into the Cabo Real, where we were well entertained by the maitre de. The party piece was the nightly visit of Maria (possibly male) the seagull, who stood his/her ground in the doorway despite the house cat, until she was hand fed her two small fish. There was a little doubt about the addition, but at 50 euros we had an outstanding meal and nice wine.
We left promptly at 0945. John had tried to top up the water using a marineiro's hose adapter, but the marineiro returned and was evidently worried that he would not get the gin palace ready for the owners by 1300. After a strange negotiation where the marineiro insisted on coming aboard Fuga, John gave the adaptor up rather than have hassle. We had a light south easterly wind, and motored until about 1200 when the wind veered and picked up a bit. We sailed past Cartagena, and then Portman. By 1630 we had arrived at Tomas Maestre, 41 miles logged. There we had to anchor and chill out a bit, as the next bridge lift was at 1800 hours.
The Mar Menor is an enclosed area of shallow water, separated from the Mediterranean by a sand bar, similar to Sandbanks and Poole Harbour, but on a much bigger scale and without the tides and sandbanks to make life interesting. It is about 12miles long and 5 miles wide, with a few islands in it. The whole of the sand bar is grossly over-developed with high rise flats. The water is warm, 22C even now, and apparently very salty due to evaporation. Indeed, salt panning is one of the local industries a little further north.
We motored across to Los Alcazares, as this offered a lee, and we knew it having stayed there one night on our trip back from Altea in November. We anchored off the yacht club, having run aground once. This revealed that our depth sounder was incorrectly set up! During the night the wind got up from the east, and we swung, and.... (you've guessed?)... we found ourselves bumping on the bottom again. So at 0230, it was up anchor and re-anchor in slightly deeper water. Mo turned down the opportunity to go and visit the Isla Perdiguera, about 4 miles away.
In the morning, we decided to take a leisurely sail to La Manga, as this offered shelter from the east wind, as well as a fairly short fetch if we got any southerlies. So we set off, and under jib alone tacked at between 3 and 4 knots the 10 miles to a position off the Marina Pto de la Manga otherwise known as Club Nautico La Isleta. We thought this might allow us to get ashore easily by dinghy, even though it seemed there was not enough water for us to enter the harbour.
The water was warm, and an inspection of the folding prop at closer quarters revealed a major accumulation of Coral worm. The day after our arrival, John put together a 'breathing apparatus' with a snorkel and tubing, that he hoped would enable him to work under water. Unfortunately the experiment was a flop. Not having ever done any scuba diving, he was not sure what to expect, but found that even the slight additional pressure and length of tube involved made it difficult to dive, work and breathe. So we put a rope around the p-bracket, and he dived repeatedly with a pallet knife scraping off a little at a time.
It was a holiday weekend. We went ashore on Saturday with the computer and although we found a couple of internet sites, none offered wifi. We could not make ourselves understood at the other marina, Puerto de Dos Mares, which also had a smart club house. Fortunately on the way back we asked at a surf shop that appeared to be staffed by bright young people.. they immediately offered us free use of their wifi, that enabled us to pick up the mails that had been blocking our server. John had by this time wrecked the battery in the notebook, by trying to make the Dell run on the boat's 12 volt DC supply, so we were unable to 'cruise' the district looking for open wifi channels.
The next day, Sunday, John's major objective was to clear the propeller, and this was finally (almost) completed on the Monday morning. After that he went in search of weed along the water line, and then other growth of various sorts on the hull. There is more to do, and perhaps it will get done in the warm water before we leave?
On Monday, we had the chart table workstation out. John found that for some bizarre reason that he cannot remember, he had disconnected the supply to the plotter. Making this good means that we now have a method of using our C-map charts under way, without recourse to generator and notebook. He took the opportunity to tidy up the wiring a little bit. The next target was the autohelm, which from time to time goes into 'standby' mode without so much as a murmur. Depending upon the point of sail you are on, the first indication is a sail flapping, or an oncoming ship presents at a different angle. Raytheon explain this with a voltage drop which would cause the system to reset itself, and John suspected this might be caused by the fridge or similar inductive load cutting in. Accordingly, the panel over the distribution terminations, the main circuit breaker panel, the rear wardrobe (and wine store) in which the battery breakers and fuses are situated all came under inspection. John had been making various assumptions about the wiring, which he eventually found to be false. Having had the lazarette lockers out, the main cockpit locker came into focus, and had to disgorge much of its contents. There we found that the negative line from the autohelm shared with a bunch of other devices, notably the water pumps, a short feed onto the main negative bus. We hope that direct connection to the bus might now have solved this annoying and possibly dangerous problem.
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| From the entrance to the harbour at C. de Palos |
Tuesday was different! The forecast had indicated wind, and it was too fresh to look forward to a dinghy trip ashore. We made good some of the panels that had been taken out for engineering investigations, but it was not a day for sunbathing or diving on the hull. In the evening we abandoned a game of scrabble, and tried to recover Willie before the wind got up any further. We were recording F7. It was dark by now, and Willie became ensnared in the lazy jack lines making the job very difficult. We abandoned Scrabble at this point, and tried to go to bed eventually in the forepeak. However the noise (mostly the furling gear which was rattling unrestrained by the control line) was incredible, and the boat was bucking around. At 0230, John got dressed and tried to resolve problems on deck, and then we decamped to the main saloon to try to sleep.
Wednesday morning and still blowing hard. Picked up some e-mails, including one more from Phil trying to excite GE Life into some sort of action regarding on-going problems with John's pension. John decided to try going to the top, and was rewarded with a long but frustrating phone call from their operations manager. The administration of this SIPP scheme has been a nightmare from the outset, and they simply do not appear to have the infrastructure to deliver a sensible level of service.
We have spent the day confined to barracks with the wind still howling at us across 200metres of water. The phone has run out of gonuts. We consoled ourselves with a V and G and T at lunch time, and promptly went to sleep. However, it gave me a chance to catch up on the web site, thanks to the generator.
Thursday, and still wet and miserable. In the afternoon it veered to the NW and we found our anchorage rather exposed. We decided to take off, and so made for the small island of Perdiguera, about 3 miles to the NW. It was great to have the engine feeling smooth again, having cleared the propeller, and pushing it a bit we got over 7 knots to windward. We anchored by ourselves, and wondered why most people were anchored on the west of the island in the wind. Then the Navtex picked up another forecast, and it was going back to NE strong to gale, and so we knew! We up anchored and motored in the dark around to the other side of the island.
The morning revealed that our neighbour, tied up to a rickety pontoon, was Lasse on Sesam (N) whom we had met in Melilla and shared the taxi into Morocco. He had run out of wine, and we were short of fruit and veg, so we both decided to go to Tomas Maestre, as the marina there was reputed to offer free wifi. Wrong! There is nothing free about TM! It is populated by expensive looking motorboats and some quite nice yachts. The fee for the night was 40 euros, the most expensive night in Spain to date bar that night in Getxco (Bilbao) which was at least in high summer. We walked about 4 kms to where we were told we could get the phone re-charged, but to no avail. Although you can in theory recharge a phone at a cashpoint, the transaction fails at the last minute presumably because it does not like the English cards. You can get cash out, but not charge your phone! We picked up a haversack load of wine, fruit and veg and enough mince to make a spaghetti bolognaise. We asked Lasse to join us, and had a little party with Carlos on the boat opposite joining us to have a look at the Dehler.
Today at last we have the sun again, and it is dead calm. Lasse says there is a high over Sicily giving us westerlies. We are going to go back to La Manga to see if we can sort the phone out. It is the only way we are going to be able to pick up e-mail. Then perhaps it will be time to make a move?
We had a gentle sail yesterday down to La Manga, and anchored close to the spot we had been at before. However we took the dinghy in further south, and had a long walk coming out onto the main road at the outskirts to La Manga. We found that the international news shop could recharge the phone for us, and sat and had a drink at the nearby cafe. Mo agreed to treat John to a Telegraph so that he could read about Tony's reshuffle. We then went into the supermarket, and emerged weighed down with a full haversack and granny trolley load, plus some extra carrier bags. On return to the boat, John had promised to investigate Mo's allegation of a leak from the heads. We can safely say that this was the worst incident of its kind John had ever encountered, and there have been many instances! The pipe leading to the outside from the holding tank, through which everything passes, had become blocked. The rest can be left to the imagination. We stopped work at 2330, and then had supper before going to bed.
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| Overlooking the anchorage behind Isla Perdiguera |