We departed San Jose refreshed and revived in glorious sunshine and calm waters. The scenery on this coastline is stunningly beautiful with amazing rock formations.
As we rounded Cabo de Gata we didn’t experience too much of a change in conditions which can sometimes be expected when rounding a headland. What we did find was some wind! as the swell was also behind us it was pushing us nicely along. We had a brilliant sail across the open water of the gulf of Almeria with great wind but very little other traffic to keep us company.
Only one large ship to contend with and it passed (albeit fairly close) without incident. That is until about 10 minutes later when our depth alarm sounded – persistently and wouldn’t be stopped – it was reading 1,7m (we are 1,45m keel) – in waters charted deeper than 100m. We were baffled, all else seemed well and visual checks showed nothing. A quick reset of the system and we were back to normal – all we could think was that perhaps the big ship had kicked up the water under the surface which confused our depth guage. Still, it is never a bad thing to have a false alarm – it just confirms we are both on our toes and that the alarm sounds plenty loudly enough to be heard even while Arctic Monkeys and the crew are singing their hearts out!
After crossing the gulf of Almeria we found ourselves heading along a rather confusing bit of coastline, so covered by agricultural plastic sheeting it is difficult to see where the land ends and the beach begins. Apparently this is where most of the UK’s salad vegetables are grown! It wasn’t really until we saw the breakwater that we were happy to say we’d arrived in Almerimar. At the office they pulled out our records from 2 years ago when we were last here and put us on the exact same mooring spot! The apartments that surround this marina seem slightly more occupied now but still largely vacant. The big change is the massive population of house martins who seem to have moved in. A very impressive sight when they are feeding at dusk but an absolute nightmare in terms of keeping a clean boat!
We bought supplies from the handy local Mercadona before setting off the next morning. We knew conditions would be against us but we thought we’d give it a go with the fallback position that we could do a short hop to Adra if necessary rather than heading all the way to Motril. It very quickly became apparent that this was indeed going to be necessary!
We managed to get our mainsail out but we were battling against a sea of fishing pots, fishing boats and 14 knot head winds. We called ahead to the Club Nautico to check they had space us, no problem the very nice lady on the phone said, and yes we could arrive before lunch. We duly arrived just before 2pm – no answer on the radio… no problem the lady answered the phone and explained that the marinero wasn’t there, could we wait on the waiting quay for him for a few minutes. We circled around and around searching for a possible “waiting quay” to no avail. I called back, the lady answered the phone again, leant out of the window and pointed to a space more suited to our dinghy than our boat. With the wind picking up we both agreed that it was a complete no go for us, even if we could get in we would struggle to get out. We called back and agreed to wait for the marinero to arrive to see if he could show us directly to our berth for the night. We did another circuit of the marina, the marinero arrived and gesticulated to us (he had no radio!) – he showed us right back to the same tiny space on the waiting quay! We called back again, this time we were told that this was the only available space ! So we huffily retreated from the marina, vowing never to return (probably)
Luckily for us there is actually a new marina inside the port of Adra that we hadn’t paid much attention to on the way in since we had our space reserved at the Club Nautico. Last time we were here it wasn’t finished, however, on our way back out of the marina we realised this time that it had electricity on all the pontoons – a swift bit of research and a phone call to Capitania and we had ourselves a berth for the night on pontoon 6 – amazing! We had to moor ourselves alongside and the marinero came along later to take our paperwork and payment (at least half the price it would have been in the Club Nautico). Not only did we get a bargain, we were nearer to the beach and fabulous promenade for me and Tines to walk along. Out of a very negative situation came an extremely positive result, we know where to moor up in Adra next time AND we proved that a bit of perseverance goes a long way!
The Adventures of Gemini J 