After three weeks of strong afternoon winds, I was feeling a little nervous at leaving our safe harbour of the past six months in Torrevieja. The yacht club had everything we needed and had become like home and we’d made some good friends there. However, our mooring was paid until 20 April so as long as the forecast was good, we would be leaving.
We couldn’t have left any earlier, not only because of the weather but various things we’d ordered didn’t arrive until the last week. We ordered a Seahopper wooden collapsible dinghy from the Boat Show in London at the beginning of December, and it only arrived the Thursday before we left. A very expensive book Roger had ordered on the internet three weeks previously only arrived on the Friday. Tony from the Dive School kindly took our regulators to be serviced about three weeks ago but when he chased them, they still hadn’t been done, so after making sure they were safe but not serviced, Tony brought them to us on a very wet Sunday the day before we left.
We woke to blue sky and sun – quite a relief after the constant rain the day before – and after getting diesel we said goodbye to our home for the past six months. The first thing we noticed was that the auto helm wasn’t working! This meant we had to hand steer the whole way. The log was also not working, even though the boat had been lifted out of the water and any barnacles etc. stuck there had been removed. I spent the morning trying to learn how to operate our new Horizon chart plotter which is linked to our AIS system – great fun as when I put the cursor on the symbol showing another boat it gives me their name, call sign and speed. Roger had read that it was best to run our engine at about 2500 revs which meant we can now average about 6 – 6.5 knots instead of the previous 5 knots. It may also be going faster since we have had its bottom cleaned.
The gas ran out when Roger was making our toasted sandwiches for lunch, which meant emptying the cockpit locker to change it. The weather changed later on and we could see heavy showers and lightening on the coast. There were some heavy showers later on, but luckily I was having my siesta at the time and was tucked up in bed.
We arrived at Villajoyosa about 4.30 p.m. and asked for a berth on the radio but were told there weren’t any (although we could see empty spaces), so we anchored just around the corner off Benidorm. Roger spent about two hours trying to sort out the auto helm – a wire had come loose, probably when the men were wiring our new LED masthead lights. We had an uncomfortable night as, although there was only a slight swell, the boat lay sideways on to it.
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| Learning to sail our new dinghy, the Seahopper |
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