The start

Where do you start with a blog of a trip?  The day you leave or the days before trying to get everything done? The day we left the UK is more fun. 

As a treat we stayed at the Hilton hotel at the airport and wandered to the check-ins the following morning feeling great – much better than the usual stupid o’clock get up and dash to the airport.  The flight was as uneventful as usual – good because whilst Carole loves flying I’m not so keen, landed in the sun and then took the taxi and train to where we’d left the boat – Ayamonte.

We spent the next few days sorting the boat out and fitting new equipment including the battery monitor that Colleagues had got for me when I retired.  This means that we can stop and anchor and keep an eye on the power left in the batteries – need to know when the fridge is going to flatten the batteries so that we can start the engine and charge them up – have to keep the beers cold!

We left Ayamonte on Wednesday 23^rd February after a few goodbye drinks with friends in the town and marina.  We’d planned a short first day to check everything out so intended to go to a place called Isla Canela – it’s actually about 8 miles as the crow flies from Ayamonte but we had to sail 4 miles down the estuary, a couple of miles out to sea to avoid the shallow, hard bits along the coast and then back in again. 

Shouldn’t have taken long at all but after a great sail out of the Guadiana estuary the wind died and we put the motor on.  Carole got out her fishing stuff – means nothing to me and insisted we go slow enough for her to fish.  As we were getting towards the entrance to Isla Canela she caught a fish.  About a 1lb mullet (we think).

At this point plans changed and we headed for an anchorage by the entrance channel to Canela where could get the BBQ going that fixed to the back of the boat.  Anchored up the fish was gutted and on the BBQ within an hour of being caught. The extra time was good because it meant we could ride the incoming tide up the river the short way the marina.

To celebrate the end of a successful first day of our trip we opened the cava and sat on the pontoon watching the sun set – and trying to get a decent picture of us both with the self-timer on the new camera – a retirement present to me from me,  talk about big kids – but funny.  Took some great photos but then lost them – cava and new camera – not a good mix.

We left Canela the next day heading for a pretty soulless place called Magazon – soulless but a good stopping off point – again the wind died and we had the engine running along with the auto pilot – I got bored at this and suggested we stop off at El Rompido a lovely anchorage with a small marina as well but a tricky entrance – you can only get in by negotiating a twisting entrance between banks of hard sand with breaking waves on them.  The pilot books don’t exactly encourage you either but the sea was flat the tide was rising so with worked our way in and stopped at the marina,  The sun set that evening was stunning – an idyllic spot. 

Only problem was that after a lot of work the engine smelt of diesel and it looks like we got a very slight diesel leak – a job for the morning I think.