It had been a very calm start to the day as we motored all the way along the beautiful coastline from Moraira to Benidorm. Around midday the wind started to pick up and we watched it carefully for a few minutes to see if it would stay.
Sure enough it did and it picked up too – before we knew it we were flying along and sailing !!! As you know by now there’s always great excitement on board when we can sail. We had both the mainsail and Genoa out and we were making great speed so we decided to head for one of our old favourite ports, Santa Pola further away than our original destination of El Campello. I called them up to make the booking and the wonderful, friendly lady said “of course we have space for our friends Gemini J”…what a welcome back.
We were pretty tired after our afternoon sailing and we had travelled 46.9 nautical miles too, only a couple more stops and our trip would be over. We watched the lovely sunset and relaxed aboard.
The next morning I was up and about having a lovely walk before our journey onwards to San Pedro del Pinatar. I looked out at the sea, everything was very calm and with gorgeous sunshine too it was more like a summer day than October.
We headed out of the harbour just as a day trip boat to the island of tabarca did the same. We waved them off as they sped past us and out towards the island.
Once we were out of the harbour we were able to put the sails up but not with quite as much wind as the day before. We did try and for a short while we were sailing once again ! The wind died down around midday and we were back to motoring along the coastline that we now know quite well.
We saw a huge smoke plume on the land which grew and grew over the course of the afternoon. We later found out it was a warehouse fire in corvera which is Xx miles away. It was incredible to see and made us realise why they are clamping down so much on burning because of the smoke in the atmosphere.
It didn’t seem like long til we were pulling in to our old marina at San Pedro del Pinatar. Once again Skipper Nigel pulled us onto our berth really well and after a little fumble with the ropes I passed them to the marinero who helped us tie up. It’s always a bit strange coming back here. It’s definitely quite a sardine marina, very full of boats and tightly packed too. We were on the same berth as we had on our way out, right at the start of May which made us reminisce about our travels. I went off for a wander and was lucky to see some flamingoes not too far from the marina.
Once I was back we spent the evening relaxing ahead of our final journey of the sailing season. We always have very mixed emotions since we’re sorry our journey is coming to an end whilst looking forward to getting home at the same time. Let’s see what the last day brings …..
The Adventures of Gemini J 