We were, as anticipated awoken by the fishing boats, Skipper Nigel actually got up at 3am and watched them depart. The next morning, I went out to see what this end of Marbella has to offer and finally got a bit of a feel for how it must once have been. Just outside the port there are some old fashioned fishing cottages which made me smile. This really is the fishing end of town. The beach and promenade here are nice too – with the palm trees and obligatory one way walking social distancing measures.
When I got back to Gemini J the fishing boats were starting to come back so we watched the unloading activity whilst we had breakfast. They certainly caught a lot of fish in their 6 hours at sea! We saw them putting it all on ice in giant boxes with a crowd of men watching – we guessed they might be the restaurant owners viewing the daily catch.
After breakfast we paid our bill in the office and headed out to sea, a very calm sea with 2 knots of wind. It was another motor day – but we did see dolphins again which was once again amazing.
We were heading back to Benalmádena and just as we arrived the none existent wind picked up. Not in enough time for us to have a quick sail, no, literally as we were coming alongside on the waiting quay. I slightly messed up the lines and the marinero had to rush over and help me !! We got the boat secured, went to the office and organised our berth. This time we had to head up the main channel and we were in a very narrow mooring space, so narrow in fact we missed it the first time and had to turn round and do a “take 2” to get in. Not helped by the high winds which had whipped up!!
We spent the evening relaxing aboard and enjoying the surroundings. The next day we finally had a dry enough day to do some much needed cleaning aboard, followed by the enjoyment of meeting up with Poppy and Judith again. We also spent some time quite literally watching paint dry since the apartment block opposite is being painted white. It’s fun to watch the progress albeit fairly slowly. The painters have a cherry picker and they move themselves up and down noisily and precariously – different from watching boat manoeuvres.
We planned to head off by dinghy round the marina …. got everything set up and found we had almost no power. We got ourselves back to the boat – just – without rowing and the inquest into the problem. Skipper Nigel determined it was the shear pin (which protects the prop from damage) that had broken. Cost to fix should be about 0,30c (one of the less expensive boat problems thankfully).
My afternoon walk took me along the promenade and by the lovely beach which is much quieter now than when we were here a couple of weeks ago. I came upon a bright, traditional building, almost Moroccan in style – not sure if it was original or replica. It currently houses the tourist information office. In the evening we had a delicious pizza and a joined Poppy and Judith for drinks aboard their lovely boat which is now on it’s home berth.
No wind for sailing the next day so we had a restful morning followed by a bit of grocery shopping and cleaning down our zodiac dinghy which we folded up and stowed. We went out to the beach bar for cocktails in the evening which was fabulous. We hope to move on tomorrow.
The Adventures of Gemini J 