Onwards, onwards

With heavy hearts we departed Cartagena and headed towards Cabo de Palos – we had nice conditions and although we didn’t get sailing we did motor sail and made fantastic time. We usually stop at San Pedro del Pinatar but we decided on a new option this time and headed to Torrevieja…another couple of hours along the way.

What had been a fairly quiet journey became very hectic at the entrance to the harbour – my goodness what a lot of traffic. Jet skis, yachts, motor boats, day sail boats it was almost scary trying to plot a course through them all ….. and then a massive motor boat decided to cut through the middle of us and another small yacht – I cannot repeat the expletives that were shouted !! Ridiculous …… and then we had to enter the marina for the first time – unsure where to go. Luckily the marineros were there waving us onto our berth – right between two tiny motor boats – we had to lean over the sides to fend off !!!! It was quite funny looking back on it but stressful at the time and we were exhausted by sunset time.

The next day we woke up relatively early and headed out of a thankfully less busy harbour entrance – only to be buzzed by para-gliders which was quite a sight.

The conditions were quite against us and we decided on a short hop to one of our favourite marinas at Santa Pola – thanks to storm activity and a warning we stayed 2 days – we had a berth on the jet ski channel. Skipper Nigel started out trying to get them all to slow down, shouting as they went by but as the afternoon went on (and they slowed down) he slowly befriended them and started to enjoy the spectacle. By the next afternoon he was waving and greeting all the jetskiers as they went by and having fun doing it 😉

There were storm clouds all around on rest day but we avoided any rain. The following day we saw that conditions were forecast to be slightly against us but we headed out of the harbour to see how it was. We were both hoping we could make it to Moraira but as we got round Tabarca Island we realized that we were in for a choppy day. In fact we got soaked when the waves came over the bow (good job saltwater is great for the teak deck). We decided to head for Villajoiosa and ended up with another 2 night stay thanks to more stormy weather moving over us.

On the second day I headed out for my usual morning exercise and came across very varied architecture including a brand new container house which looked truly amazing.

The sky was cloudy as we rounded Benidorm the next day but conditions were calmer (only the odd bow wave). We headed to Moraira via the amazing Peñan de Ifach rock at Calpe from where we could make the crossing to Ibiza …. when the weather conditions were right.

Once again we had a 2 day stay in the lovely Moraira – another one of our favourite marinas. I went paddle boarding the next morning at sunrise which was amazing. In the afternoon we took the dinghy across the marina to a mooring point where we could load up with some shopping. On the way back we saw a huge heron – clearly looking for a fish dinner !!