Cruising progress 2015 (Click to enlarge)
Interactive map of entire 2015 cruise.
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8th November 2015
Having left Valencia, we had a great sail along the coast for the first couple of hours and then had to motor sail as the wind came round on to the nose and increased to about 25 kts. The following day we had another excellent sail for most of the way along to the Mar Menor and ended up trying to slow down a bit as we were aiming for the 18:00 bridge opening to get us in to La Manga. We timed it perfectly and once through the bridge motored down to the far end and anchored off the Club Nautico marina. We spent ten days in the Mar Menor, moving from anchorage to anchorage as the wind changed direction and strength. One day it rose to 40 kts, but this time there was no danger of dragging as even in that strength of wind the seas are pretty well flat. The day we decided to leave the Mar Menor, we were motoring across for the 10:00 bridge opening and managed to get ourselves entangled in some fishing buoys which looked as though they were wrapped around the prop, but luckily as we reversed, the line snapped and we were able to free ourselves with no apparent damage, thank goodness.
We continued on our way, heading back out to sea and had yet another excellent sail down to the bay at Mazarron before anchoring for the night in a very rolly anchorage. The highlight of the following day was motoring through a large pod of pilot whales, which completely ignored us while they searched for food. On our very last day of sailing for this season, we left our overnight anchorage and tried to unfurl the genoa, only to discover that the furling gear had seized, as it had done two years ago, so that's another job added to the growing list for the start of next season! However, although it had been getting stiffer for a while, it was great it lasted so long.
We are now back in Aguadulce, where we wintered last year and have been working on jobs that should have been completed at the beginning of the season, the biggest of which was making up "chaps" for the dinghy. This is a heavy duty UV resistant fitted cover, consisting of seven pieces of material with lots of darts and fifteen holes both rectangular and round, of varying sizes. My poor little sewing machine didn't know what had hit it and struggled to get through some of the material but after three weeks of constant work it's finally finished and hopefully this will be one job I never, ever have to repeat!
Due to the length of time the "chaps" had taken to complete, we spent the vast majority of our remaining time working through the normal winter maintenance jobs and rarely left the marina. We did manage to escape a couple of times to have lunch with various friends. We hired a car for the final week before going home, but again because of time restraints, were unable to make much use of it.
Our lift-out this year went without any hitches, except for when we were supervising the pressure washing and were attacked by mosquitoes. We each acquired about ten nasty bites, a nice way to finish off the season! Our plans for next year are very much up in the air - do we start heading back west or do we proceed further into the Med? The weather down here is a big attraction! Lots of research will be required over the winter before we make a final decision.
Sailing this year has been a pretty mixed bag, some of it really enjoyable and some not so. Hopefully whatever we decide to do next year, it will be bit more relaxing than of late.
