We really know the way by now and we departed our alongside berth at around 9am to head towards Cabo de Gata and one of our favourite marinas, San Jose. Garrucha is a very quiet marina and overshadowed by the industrial nature of it’s breakwater where huge ships dock to load what we think is gypsum. The night before we had watched the tugs take one ship out and less than half an hour later another one arrived. The lorries started loading it before 8am the next morning.
The conditions were perfect for sailing and it was not long before we turned off the engine and sailed away, following the coastline past Mojacar and Carboneras before rounding a very slight headland ( we did motor sail for a couple of hours at this point to get us to a better sailing position to use the wind). We had to do a fair few sail changes during the day to keep the wind in the sails but it kept us on our toes and it was good fun. All in all a fantastic day and another 38 nautical miles covered (because of the extra needed to make the most of the wind, it should have been around 30 if we could have travelled direct)
In the evening we headed to a restaurant and had a classic San Jose offering of “paradilla de pescado” – a plate of grilled fish to share overlooking the beach, it was a great end to a fabulous day.
The Adventures of Gemini J 