SE Spanish Coast

Gibraltar to Cartegena

We left Queensway marina at about 08.30 and motored round to fill up with duty free diesel. Then we said goodbye and set of on what would possibly be our longest single passage to date, just over 400 miles.

Gib from East, flat area of Rock in water catchment system

Zero wind in Gibraltar translated to 20knts of westerly when we reached Europa point and turned east. This lasted for most of the day and we made spectacular mileage, as night started to fall the wind started to increase and the sea state quickly deteriorated soon we had 35knts and were barreling downwind through the night. We had 3 reefs in the main (the smallest it will go) and a scrap of headsail set on a pole to stop it collapsing as we surfed and rolled our way down the waves. This still proved too much sail and soon I was on deck again dragging down the remainder of the main sail.

Myself and Amanda managed zero sleep all night as it was just too rough and noisy below, we did try but as soon as we settled something would happen and we were required on deck again.

24hr mileage was about 180 which is 7.5knt average which included motoring around Gib for and hour and a half sorting fuel out so pretty impressive for a boat Magnums size, but I would have settled for a few less miles and a good sleep.

Morning broke and the wind dropped slightly as we rounded Cabo de Gata. We picked up another yacht on AIS at this point, S/V Melody, who were to stay with us for the next few hours. We also picked up our first phone signal for hours so quickly checked the weather. It wasn’t promising we had about 12 hours of SW’lys and then the wind was due to swing northerly and build to gale force.

As we were both tired we decided to cut our losses and head inshore where our chart showed a couple of small marinas. We reached the first one, Garriche at about 17.00 and radioed in we were met with static filled Spanish, I tried again but then they decided not to answer. As we were almost there we dropped sail and motored in, it was a tiny place with no room to swing a cat, there was obviously no space for us and despite hanging around nobody came to greet us as is normal in Spanish marinas. The message was clear, we had to keep going.

Our next port of refuge lie 45miles to the north of us and with the threat of gale force head winds we made best speed out to sea and onward.  It was a pretty sobering moment knowing that the wind could change any moment and it would take us between 8 and 9 hours to reach safety !

We made best possible use of the remaining favorable wind and then as it started to drop we had the engine straight on to ensure we made good time. We also picked up Melody again at this point as she had stayed offshore and we had caught her again.

It was a long evening and night and then when we were about 2 hours away from Cartagena the north breeze started to fill in. we both held our breath. All was fine until with and hour to go we had 25knts on the nose, this slowed progress but with each mile we gain more shelter from the land until about 02.00 we made out the channel lights and entered the harbor. While we were sorting out which lights were which and how to enter the harbor safely we noticed Melody had tucked herself onto our tail about 300m away and was following our every move, they obviously trusted our pilotage and were too tired to do it for themselves!!

Anyway at 3 in the morning we were safely tied up and crashed out for the remainder of the night. Zzzzzzzzzzzz

Cartagena

A lovely place for an unexpected visit and we were really lucky that the Audi Cup Racing Series was there for the week so we were treated to seeing some fantastic race boats in the harbour. 

We had a really nice walk up to park on top of the hill which gave us a really good “free” view of the remains of a Roman Amphitheatre.

Audi Race boats in Harbour

Audi Race boats along quay

Roman Amphitheatre

Also we have met some nice people over the last couple of weeks and hope that we catch up with them along the way. We were really impressed by a race boat which arrived next to us in Cartagena (3am and still being nosey at who was coming in!), Phillippa and Nick were off to Palma to start a round the worked 2 handed race, she is certainly a braver person than me! Fantastically fast boat, we are looking forward to watching their progress.  We also meet the Russell family on Tinfish whose kids Jenny and Peter are having the time of their life!