After completing the West to East trans Atlantic passage from Tortola to Gibraltar the crew have been enjoying time ashore both in Gibraltar and in La Linea, the Spanish town adjacent to Gibraltar. We also took the back-wrapped spinnaker ashore and tied it between two palm trees in the marina parking lot and managed to untangle it. Nakee enjoyed several repairs, cleaning, maintenance and a bit of care after a long, salty and difficult passage across a large ocean!
Since then the crew of Nakee have been enjoying cruising the Spanish coast and the Balearics Islands. The first leg from Gibraltar to Santa Pola was super fast downwind sailing in Westerly winds in the high 30s, gusting to 40 knots. Drew saw Nakee’s speed over ground touch 10.6 knots while she was surfing down one of the very large waves! The strong following sea made for very rolly conditions aboard, daily life and sleeping was very challenging.
Our arrival in Santa Pola was also challenging as the marina staff directed us into an impossibly small berth on a finger pontoon about half as long as Nakee. The berth was behind a huge power boat with a bow protruding into a channel that wasn’t as wide as Nakee is long. Of course there was a strong cross wind blowing in the mid 20s and, after 3 failed attempts and 2 near misses with other moored boats, I gave up and moored – despite the objection of the marina staff – on an empty hammerhead in the wider, main channel. The marina guy rode his bicycle around to us and apologized and explained that it was his second day on the job and working in a marina. He secured permission from his boss for us to stay where we were on the hammer head. There was a bit of stress later on in the marina office on check in, when they wanted us to move back to the first assigned berth the following morning. They explained that a ladder into the water on the hammer head couldn’t be blocked or they would be fined by the police. Luckily Nakee was moored well clear of that ladder, so we stayed where we were with their permission.
We enjoyed Santa Pola! Went swimming on the nearby beach several times, discovered great restaurants, especially one serving pizza made with “pinza” crust and a small Mexican place that was fabulous!
Kelvin’s brother Gary, who lives nearby kindly received more than a dozen packages of boat parts for me at his house! He even delivered them to us in the marina and I took him and his son out to eat with the crew.
After installing several parts for various repairs and stowing the rest of the gear away, we topped up the water tanks, disconnected from shore power and slipped the mooring lines around noon this past Saturday.
Since then we have had only one brief period of winds touching 30 knots. The rest of the time we have had winds in 0-7 knots, much of it becalmed and drifting with the ocean currents.
This morning we woke up finally past Ibiza and now, after a wonderful chicken and wild mushroom risotto prepared by Kelvin and John, we have drifted into sight of Majorca, which we are going to sail clockwise around, to the North- Eastern point, and the back South-West to anchor off Puerto Polenza where we plan to take a shore break for a few days and – you guessed it – some more boat repairs! We have to get the tangled spinnaker / top down furler ashore in the dingy, Dianna empty space with palm trees to untangle it (again). The plan is shorten the torsion cable by about a foot, and try one last time to see if we can get the top down furler to work, before reverting back to the spinnaker sock. I also need to run a new wire for the main water tank sender, as the old one is faulty and we can’t monitor or fresh water levels. The fun never stops!
