Navigation & Equipment

24 September 2002

We set sail for Ibiza in the last week of September and I finally met my first flying fish, which landed on deck with a wet plop in the middle of my night watch and nearly gave me heart failure! By the time I located the source of the ‘plop’ the poor thing had expired.

We anchored in the harbour off the charming town of Santa Eulalia for two days then went across to mainland Spain, heading for Cartagena. On this trip I made one of those awful faux pas that I suppose have to be done at least once, though Mike thinks I shouldn’t admit to it.

The longitude for Cartagena is W000.41.00. Now, we had been sailing for the past eight months in easterly longitudes, and with the Waypoint format already set to E, I neglected to amend the E to W, so entered into the GPS a waypoint of E000.41.00, which of course yielded a conflicting and lower mileage from that of my carefully plotted course on the computer. That should have alerted me (mad cow) but being in a hurry I ignored it, and for once, Mike didn’t check my workings. So, we sailed gaily along and when near what we figured should have been land, nothing appeared. Much mystification until we realized the error. Fortunately, no harm was done, though it took us slightly out of our way and made the trip a little longer. And, of course, I didn’t hear the end of it from my ‘old salty dog’ for days after.

The marina at Cartagena was reasonable, the town was interesting and we spent seven days there, meeting new yachties, including some Americans who gave us lots of useful information on the trip we were vaguely planning in the States. We had this very ambitious plan of sailing up the east coast, taking the Hudson River and Eire Canal through to the Great Lakes and then coming down the Tennessee River all the way to New Orleans. It was a grand plan and we figured it would give us a good tour of the country. As it happened, we never did it.

We bought a bicycle at Cartagena - an ordinary ladies bike, not one of those fancy, expensive, collapsible sailing bikes. Mike took the wheels and pedals off and we stored it in the fore cabin.


7 October

We left Cartagena and headed southwards towards Almerimar stopping and anchoring at a pretty bay with a long beach called Playa de los Genoveses. Mike caught a fish on the way, Dorado we think, cooked it on our little barbeque at the back of the boat for lunch, then went for a swim to the beach and took a long walk.

It was so pleasant that we had made plans to spend the night there, but at about 4pm a nasty swell started setting in making the anchorage untenable so we decided to push on. Within an hour we were caught in a most horrendous storm, which just went on and on. It got dark quickly, we had the port of Almeria right behind us, and the wind on the nose, of course - it always is in the Mediterranean. We didn’t want to attempt going into Almeria in that sort of weather at night and we couldn’t just leave the boat or we would have floated into the harbour anyway, so we had to keep going just to keep off-shore, constantly dodging all the other traffic in the area. Morning brought no respite in the wind, but we took in the sails and started to motor. Painfully slow still, thumping head on into the wind, waves and but at least now we were travelling towards our destination. It took us a full 24 hours to cover a distance of 70 miles! We were accompanied by lots of dolphins for a while which cheered us.

We stayed in Almerimar for 18 days and had a grand time. The marina is large and well designed and a popular warm spot for yachts to spend the winter. We met lots of very nice people and had a good social time in the waterfront tapas bars where we were fed tasty little snacks free with every round of drinks - so much food that towards the end of the evening you had to say “no more”. I had by now really settled into and just loved the cruising life and I was prepared to put up with the sailing to achieve all that. Mike, of course, loved the sailing and put up with being in port as a part of the deal. Jack Sprat and his wife!

Although Mike had had a boat before this one, it was a long time ago, and we were still very much the ‘new kids on the block’ when it came to cruising. Everyone we met had been cruising and living aboard for years and years and we felt very inexperienced by comparison. They were all so kind and helped wherever they could; people lent us charts and pilots to photocopy, books and videos to swap, and gave us loads of advice and help on the boat. I was looking forward to the day when I would be the one dishing out help and advice.

One kind friend, Ken, spent all day fixing our fridge for us at a nominal charge - so exciting to have refrigeration at long last. We had a stainless steel arch fitted to the back of the boat, upon which we mounted a new 80-Watt solar panel, and had two new batteries fitted, doubling our domestic bank. Forever had three radios aboard: two VHF (Very High Frequency) radios, one fitted and one hand held - VHF radio has a line-of-sight range of up to 70 miles and allows you to communicate with other radios within that range; and a small SSB (Single Side Band) radio receiver only. Mike had planned to buy a more sophisticated SSB radio including a transmitter which would have permitted us to keep in regular contact with sailing networks. However, new ones were prohibitively expensive and we were unable to find a decent second hand one, so we decided to do without and make do with only the VHF.

All craft at sea, including yachts, are required to monitor VHF Channel 16, the emergency channel, at all times. The VHF radio is used to call up port authorities and marina staff prior to entering a harbour for permission to enter and for giving or receiving information that may be pertinent, like weather conditions, shipping movements, etc. and vessels at sea (or in port) can communicate with each other.

Yachties, naturally, love their radios as it is their form of local telephone amongst each other. However there are those who chat away on it ad nauseum, and whilst I admit that it is not only the Americans, they do tend to be the worst offenders. Channel 16 is supposed to be the hailing channel only and then the two craft communicating are required to move to another, agreed, channel. But, in their excitement and enthusiasm many callers forget to move to another channel and the rest of us, tuned in just in case of an emergency, are obliged to listen to their tiresome chatter. It goes something like this:

- Dreamboat, Dreamboat, Dreamboat. This is Saucy Lady, Saucy Lady. Dreamboat, Dreamboat, Dreamboat. This is Saucy Lady. Come in please. Over.

(If there is no reply, Saucy Lady repeats her plea. You have to imagine the drawl.)

- Saucy Lady, Saucy Lady, Saucy Lady. This is Dreamboat. Go ahead. Over.

- Hi there, Frank. It’s Marian here. How’re you guys doing? Over.

- Oh, yeah. Well, we’re fine Marian. Good to hear your voice again. When did you get in? Over.

- We just got in this morning, about nine o’clock. Had quite a good southerly all the way in, actually. Over.

- Yeah, we had much the same yesterday. Heard there’s going to a bit of a blow later today, so we’re glad to be in a safe port now. How long’s this bad weather going to last, do you know? Over.

- I’m not sure Frank. Hang on I’ll just ask the skipper here. (Voice raised) George honey, Frank wants to know how long the bad weather’s going to last.

(Crackle, splat…. Change channe… ..diots!)

- What was that, Frank? Did you say something?

- Oh, I think it was someone telling us to change channel. We’d better move off 16. Do you want to pick a channel, Marian?

- Uh, ok. Roger that. How about 68? Shall we try 68? Over.

- Roger, roger. 68 it is. Going up. Over.

If the callers are friends of yours or you think they are going to talk about something that interests you, you also move to the alternative channel and earwig on their conversation. It is a fairly common occurrence to be having a quiet little chat with one boat and have a third and even a fourth suddenly butt in with comments. Needless to say, we were careful about gossiping about each other on the radio!

We met a number of yachts that had children aboard and always found them surprisingly mature and resourceful for their age. They would scamper around the marinas, their own and other boats, up and down the rigging, cute as little sea monkeys. Of course, this was usually the only life they could remember so they took everything in their stride. Though they had to spend some hours every morning with a parent (usually the mother) doing correspondence school work they would spend the rest of the day running around, having made friends wherever they could amongst the other cruising kids as well as local children.

I’d watch them, even tiny tots, handling their dinghies and outboards with amazing dexterity, putting me to shame as I still battled with ours – particularly the outboard which, to my eternal embarrassment, never wanted to start when I pulled that ridiculous rope thing! Why couldn’t we have had a simple key start? I saw some large smart outboards with those, but then they also had a proper pivotal seat, rather than a saggy fender suspended across the middle, and a steering wheel as well as both forward and reverse gears, rather than a long tiller handle I had to swing about to steer and swivel right round for reverse. Mike had no trouble with it.

I forgot to mention Henrietta earlier. Having neither kids nor pets aboard I bought an African Violet pot plant, the hardy purple variety. She thrived and bloomed in her pot on the shelf in the main saloon and survived all manner of unpleasant conditions.