More mooching in Moraira

After our mammoth 26 hour crossing we didn’t wake up til after 9 and looked again at our mooring.  We still weren’t happy as we were right against a concrete wall and in fact one of our fenders got broken during the night.  We talked through the option of moving the boat within the marina or moving on.  The office suggested we move and as were both really tired we decided that was the best option.  As it turned out, nothing is straightforward and as Skipper Nigel manoeuvred us perfectly to go alongside the marinero started gesticulating. Unfortunately I took this to mean he wanted us to go in with the bow pointing to the wall rather than alongside so Skipper had to make some quick changes.  Even more unfortunately once we had aborted the mooring to re-start the approach, it became clear that we should have been alongside all along – just as Skipper Nigel had started with.  After a few choice words and a trip around the marina to line us up again we finally came alongside perfectly.  The marinero was most apologetic and once again we got our fenders sorted and finally started to relax. I got to eat my slice of Mallorcan cake that it had been too choppy to enjoy on the crossing 🙂

That afternoon I dragged myself out for a very slow wander – still feeling very tired but the ducks put a smile on my face.

The next day after an extremely early night we awoke to find wind – much, much more than anticipated in the marina. It was blowing us onto the pontoon making a departure tricky to say the least.

We quickly realised we wouldn’t be going anywhere that day (to be honest neither of us was too worried, we were both still really tired). The wind was strong, gusty and in the “wrong” direction meaning it would be against us heading towards Calpe. I had a more energetic walk up the hill that overlooks the marina which was stunningly beautiful.

The following day we woke up early, anticipating our continuing journey but even from down below deck we could hear and feel the wind. It had definitely not died down as forecast and we chatted over breakfast and re- looked at the weather. It seemed like it would be calming down around lunchtime so we agreed to make a final call on departure at 13:30. We even had an early lunch in anticipation of afternoon sailing. That wasn’t to be as the gusts kept coming. We had chatted to the other Skippers and one had said they were thinking like we were and might leave at lunchtime. In fact one did decide to go for it – but needed two attempts to get out of their space. We decided that another restful afternoon in lovely Moraira wouldn’t do us any harm at all 🙂

That evening after my outing I said to Skipper Nigel “there’s a funny smell” – further investigation and we found that one of our batteries was completely overheating. As quickly as possible (the batteries are under the sink and fairly awkward to get to) Skipper disconnected said battery and lifted it out. It was boiling hot and oozing acid !!!! What a nightmare…..we secured it and made sure no more acid could get on anything then Skipper Nigel replaced it with one of the spare batteries that we have on board. The whole incident took an hour and we now have to do some investigation to check out our battery charger. Given the state of the battery we think it had been failing for a while and was probably a bit of a dud. I hauled it off to the bins on the trolley (it was really heavy and still hot). We were thankful it had happened how it did in a time and place where it was relatively easy to change.

The following morning finally it was calm and we had the engines on at 9am by which time the boat in front of us had already departed. We had a faultless exit and made our way onto calm seas with no wind. A lovely start to the day…..