We’re off again

With a plan to set sail towards Gibraltar we headed out of Cartagena on Tuesday morning. The weather was cloudy and fairly calm. We were hoping for wind later in the day and certainly in the afternoon when it was forecast to pick up to around 10-12 knots which should be nice sailing weather. As we rounded the pontoon it was strange to see no boats – not even the orange rescue ships that are usually there. In the past we have headed out of the marina past a massive cruise ship and sometimes two, but we haven’t seen one in Cartagena since February.

We set out towards Cabo Tinoso and decided that perhaps the conditions would enable us to get to Garrucha, so we duly set the heading and tested the autohelm (if you remember we had changed the fluxgate compass which is part of it’s operation). Unfortunately we couldn’t hold a course and we think it needs re-calibrating, the conditions were just slightly choppy for us to do that there and then. We will have to try another day to see if we can complete the fix by another calibration of the compasses.

We were very excited about an hour into the journey when we set sail proper, putting out the mainsail and genoa sail and switching off the engine. 20 minutes later the wind dropped and we were back to using our mainsail and motor. It was quite comfortable and we headed at 240 degrees all day to get to Garrucha. The only real excitement was a frightening moment when a large speedboat approached us from behind really, really fast. I was freaking out thinking they hadn’t seen us but it was quite the opposite as the Guardia Civil slowed down and pulled alongside us (at a distance) – they gave us quite a scan, looking at us through binoculars. We were expecting a call on the radio but they simply sped off again, quite an experience. Luckily it has happened to us once before and we expect it will happen again. The water is very, very quiet, we saw precious few sailboats and the odd trawler. We heard on the radio of a migrant boat with 42 people on board in difficulty (as usual, “keep a sharp lookout”) which is becoming increasingly regular to hear.

You can see from the photos that the weather improved during the day and we arrived in Garrucha at about half past 6 after a long day, but we did cover nearly 49 nautical miles so we were happy to get on our way.