We departed Benalmádena and waved a fond goodbye to Poppy and Judith who took these lovely photos of us departing.
As we got round the breakwater we thought it would be another day on motor but as soon as we made our way out into the gulf of Málaga we were pleasantly surprised. There was wind, at a nice strength and we pulled out the sails and switched off the motor. It stayed that way all day at last and we were hitting 6 + knots ☺️. We saw dolphins swimming around the boat, I took lots of videos but didn’t capture them this time ! Skipper Nigel took a video of me instead 😉
In the afternoon the wind picked up, we continued sailing but the wind was really hot. The only way to describe it is like the heat you feel when you open the oven door. It was incredible. 36 degrees of heat out on the water and in port when we arrived. As we approached Caleta de Vélez the wind picked up to around 20 knots gusting 25 which is quite strong for getting onto an unknown berth. We were actually directed to the waiting quay where a marinero “helped” us with the lines/ropes although in reality we might have managed better on our own, at one point he even dropped one of them !! He tried to hold the boat, (6 tons) in 23 knot winds with both ropes in his hands rather than using the tie off points skipper Nigel raised his voice telling him what he should do. We got onto the quay thanks to good rope work from us and excellent skippering. Later in the day we moved to our final berth (when the wind had died down a bit). In the meantime we watched lots of activity as the fishing boats came back.
We didn’t sleep brilliantly well as the wind was howling all night. We woke up with a plan to leave early but in reality we both knew it was too windy. When there are white tops in the marina you know it’s not a sailing day. We didn’t need to check the weather forecast although a visit to the office to pay for another night meant we saw the weather warning of gale force winds a bit further out in the med. We went out for a delicious lunch at the same restaurant we were at on my birthday last year, and we had the same delicious mussels, langostinos pil pil and house salad. Hopefully tomorrow we can sail away.
The Adventures of Gemini J 