This post takes us back to Tuesday 17th September when we set sail (or rather started the motor) on Gemini J for our September / October 2019 trip. This time our destination was to be Valencia and we were fairly late starting out after the dreadful Gota Fria storms that hit our coastline in the run up to our departure. Indeed we had been hoping to set off a few days earlier but were held back by the weather, even at our house the storms raged for a 48 hour period.
The day of our departure was a twin cruise ship day so we had the fun of watching them arrive and then motoring out past them, always an impressive sight!
Day 1 we headed back to our old marina in San Pedro del Pinatar and had a calm night in Marina de las Salinas, we hadn’t really seen much evidence of the storm during the day but as we approached the port the water was a very vibrant green, a colour I have never seen before.
Day 2
We watched a lovely sunrise as we prepared to head along a familiar stretch of coastline once again towards Santa Pola although the sea was extremely calm (most definitely the calm after the storm) and unfortunately we had to navigate our way through storm debris. Very sadly we came across many of the tuna fish which had suffered when their fish farm broke during the storm. It was honestly the most awful thing we’ve seen since sailing, luckily it was only in a very small area of the sea and we know the beaches were closed. We also hope that many more of the thousands of fish affected survived and are now swimming free somewhere in the mediterranean. Reading the press afterwards we read that some 9.000 tuna had suffered when their fish farm was tumbled around like a washing machine before it broke and realeased them all, a stress that a tuna fish would struggle to survive.
After that unpleasant start we continued our way on, managing about half an hour sailing without the motor during the early afternoon which was nice. We moored up in the very familiar Santa Pola and prepared our evening meal whilst watching the sunset.
Day 3 was again familiar to us, this time we headed for Villajoyiosa although it was the first time we had approached from this direction, going past all the beautiful, colourful houses of the older part of the town. We really should come back and visit by car sometime and see a bit more of the place. The marina here is really nice and quiet, very calm and safe and we had a very relaxing evening.
On Day 4 we weren’t sure of our destination this day, we started out in amazing conditions, sailing away from Villajoyiosa with great winds and sea.
Benidorm came into view very quickly and just as quickly the conditions changed, calm seas became choppy and the wind jumped up from a nice 10 knots to 24 plus, which would have been fabulous if it had been with us. Regular readers of this blog will realise that this is rarely the case and of course it was against us. We weren’t particularly worried at that stage, we knew we just had to get round the headland past Benidorm and we should be able to sail again. We ploughed on the next three miles, got round the headland, as the wind changed direction again and our hopes were not to be met, no sailing for us that day! We continued on in challenging conditions with a couple of meters swell and decided to stop at Calpe. The rock is stunning, the marina less so, it has V shaped mooring lines which are a bit of a nightmare to put onto our boat, and we were in a space designed for larger boats too. It was a bit of a stressful end to a rather stressful day, we ate aboard and determined to head off early in the morning.
Day 5 came and the conditions were calmer, we refuelled at the fuelling dock in Calpe just by the fishing boats then headed round the famous rock.
This was also the day that we took Gemini J further north than we had ever been on her. That was when we rounded Cabo de la Nao, we also got to try a new marina for us when we went to Javea. The final part of the journey was across the bay in front of the town of Javea and then we had to navigate a windsurfing competition before we could enter the marina. Those guys really do get up some speed when they are competing! It was a fairly short day and we managed to moor up before we had a lovely lunch at the club nautico restaurant in Javea. We had a really relaxing afternoon and definitely recharged our batteries before the next leg of our journey up to Valencia.
Day 6 was another calm day and we set off for Gandia, only one more stop away from Valencia.
The headland which shelters the town of Javea is quite simply stunning and photos don’t do it justice. After the beauty of the rocky outcrops between Javea and Denia we then came to a really quite flat area of coastline, much more so than we are used to on the costa blanca.
Now we found ourselves on the Costa de Azahar, famous for it’s orange groves, some of which we could see from the boat. Visibility was excellent and Valencia came into view early afternoon however it seemed like a very long time before we managed to round the massive breakwater and moor up on the visitors quay in order to do our paperwork before being shown our mooring. Valencia marina is amazing and we were rewarded with a truly wonderful sunset on our first night on pontoon F (which would become our home for the next 8 days but more on that to follow…..)
The Adventures of Gemini J 