Into the Med

We leave the marina in La Linea just as the sun is beginning to rise over Gibraltar and the views are stunning. As we travel east around the rock the Spanish, British and African coasts are simmering in the sun and the sea is busy with shipping and wildlife - there is so much to look at. As we motor out of the bay we see a seagull narrowly escaping death as a big splash comes up from underneath him; a fish making a grab. We think it might have been a tuna as there is a lot of tuna fishing and tunny nets in this area. As we pass by several ships at anchor, a pod of bottle nose dolphins come over for a quick hello at our bow. They are so much bigger than the common dolphins we normally see. Common dolphins are around too and we see them several times - living up to the name they have been given. We see some flying fish zooming by and a tuna repeatedly jumping out of the water. A 6ft blue shark sidles up to our bow and then shoots off as if he had got a terrible fright. Our most unusual sighting of the day is what look like giant translucent sea cucumbers who are drifting below the surface as we sail past. We pass more than a hundred of them; some are as small as your hand and others are like curled up snakes and over 10 feet long. We look them up on the google and find out they are Pyrozomes - These are not individual animals as they appear to be but each one is a colony of zooids who work in unison to propel the colony through the water. During our research we also learn that a Portuguese Man - o- war is similar - it’s colony of zooids and not a jelly fish at all! What a great and unexpected biology lesson we all get.
At mid-day a fog starts to come in and our circle of vision reduces gradually until we can hardly see 10 meters beyond our bow. We have our electronic charts and AIS on our phones so we know where we were going and what traffic is about- this reduces the fear factor that is normally associated with sea fog but the eeriness of it remains. We are in the thick of it for an hour before it slowly begins to dissipate and our field of vision expands until finally the coastline emerges blurry at first and then it sharpens in the sunshine.
We arrive in Fuengirola marina and have our first experience of Mediterranean mooring.
There are no finger pontoons so boats sit side by side in a row, their sterns tied off at a long pontoon and their bows attached to mooring lines which are out from the pontoon.
Ronan reverses the boat back to the pontoon and the Marinero hands me the start of the mooring line. I walk with the line up along the boat, dropping muck everywhere as the ropes are filthy from lying in the marina water. I tie off the rope on the cleat at the bow. Job done, I turn around to see a big kerfuffle at the back of the boat. The Marinero and 4 other men on the pontoon are pushing our boat off and Ruby and Colm rushing for fenders while Ronan is on the helm and trying to throw and retrieve ropes. I had unwittingly tightened the wrong end of mooring rope and Regal’s stern was pinned to the pontoon. No amount of men pushing her stern is going to fix this so we have to drop all the ropes and leave the berth to come in again. We have a large audience for our second attempt - there is nothing Boaties like more than to watch others make a mess of things. Some wonderfully disapproving looks come our way from people sipping wine in their cockpit.
The second attempt is better. We are securely tied up but all hot and bothered so we escape to the beach- A swim cools us down, erasing any bad feelings and we have a great evening in cafe BingRead more