It was a great feeling rounding Europa Point, this was us officially in the Mediterranean which I suppose was our ultimate goal, albeit, we still have some distance to go to reach Greece.
Rounding Europa point towards Catalan bay
Approaching the firing range!
Typically of the Med, it was a motor sail, we did know that the wind is either all or nothing in the Med and today it was a nothing day. We did have a bit of excitement going round Europa Point though – the firing range which you pass decided to start practicing their aim. Thankfully they need a whole lot more practice, we got through safely and reached Estepona five hours later. If only we knew the firing range was safer than Estepona turned out to be.
We were helped into our berth in the marina and managed our first Med style mooring without too much trouble. We chose to go in bow to until we get a bit of practice at picking up the lazy lines and getting lines ashore without hitting the quay. All fine when you have someone on the quay taking the lines but I’m not sure how it will go if there’s no one there, Mmmm!
Initial impression of Estepona wasn’t great, the marina was a bit tired and a bit smelly but we decided we would head out that night and give it a once over before jumping to conclusions. Our trip out that evening was put paid to following an altercation with one of the Costa del Sol thugs, who I naively thought were all a bit of a myth. He came in on his wee speed boat at a rate of knots causing the moored boats to violently surge towards the quay. He was half cut and trying to impress some young ladies on the quay side. I took him to task about his speed and he took umbrage making some noise about sinking the boat during the night. Just to be sure, we didn’t head out that night and sure enough he reappeared at 1 am demanding an apology which obviously wasn’t given and proceeded to threaten to cut off certain bits of Gordon’s anatomy or worse still, kill him and sink the boat in the middle of the night. As you can imagine, it didn’t lead to a peaceful night’s sleep as Gordon slept with his bolt cutters! lol.
We left Estepona the next morning as planned but the one thing which wasn’t planned was the thick fog all day. Not a good sail, especially after such a restless night before, we also got news that Harry was taken into hospital pretty ill in Denia so very worried about him as well. Now trying to get somewhere central where I can get transport up to Denia to be with Diane and Harry, the next obvious place is Malaga. All in all, not a good start to our Mediterranean cruise.
