We have not gone far when the Swiss couple catches up with us and we walk into town together. They tell us they are working their way west, planning to head out of the Med and down to the Canaries, preparatory to crossing the Atlantic. They have been struggling for several weeks with bad weather and realise they have left it very late. Their experience adds to our own unease about getting to our preferred winter destination, as we are heading for where they have been trying to leave. And there are still around 250 miles to cover to reach Barcelona.
We have walked our kilometre to the supermarket when, at a fork in the road, we come upon a sign saying ‘Supermercado 2’ and an arrow pointing down the left fork. We mill around a bit, contemplating the meaning of the sign, having no desire for a 6 km (4 mile) walk to buy something for dinner. Our normal method, of looking out for people carrying supermarket bags, does not apply here. There are no pedestrians around, no cars even, on a street that has only building rubble on either side of it and becomes a dead-end at the harbour.
Then, as if from nowhere, an elderly, well-dressed couple appear, walking very slowly. Their clothes are dark and formal and they both wear substantial knee-length overcoats with Astrakhan collars, for this is October. The four of us are in shorts, T-shirts and a variety of hats to keep the low, late-afternoon sun out of our eyes. The gulf between our lives and theirs is very large. In a rapidly changing world, I can see us through their eyes and approach them in what I think is as non-threatening a way as possible.
Unfortunately, I forget to smile. There is hesitation in the woman’s eyes. The man, older and frailer, holding tightly to her arm, looks almost afraid. ‘Con permiso,’ I say. She shakes her head and raises a hand to ward off my demand, whatever it is going to be. I remember to smile, and say quickly, ‘Supermercado, por favor?’ Her face relaxes and with rapid unintelligible words but eloquent hands she says to carry straight on and the store is on the left – but not the first left, she is most insistent, ignore the first left and take the second. I thank her and she smiles. As we walk away I hear the man beside her ask anxiously what we had wanted. ‘Supermercado,’ she explains soothingly. ‘Ah,’ he says, reassured.
First left, as she had said, is a dead-end; into apartments. Just beyond is the entrance to El Molinero. There is fresh fish – at last. I decide to be bold and by-pass all the old favourites for something quintessentially Spanish that I have seen often but never tried. I don’t know what it is exactly, but feel sure it will be delicious cooked with onion, garlic, peppers and tomato in a fish stock. At the bread counter I point to a loaf that looks more pneumatic than the rest and pass over the amount on the till screen. The parcel put into my hands feels like a slab of concrete inside its tissue paper.
It does not turn out to be my most successful shopping expedition for another reason. Having got the fish home, I realise that they have scales. I sigh and take them out into the cockpit, having learned early the error of de-scaling fish in the galley. Despite my best efforts, however, the scales get everywhere. My two fish are ready for the pan as the smug couple rise from their dinner table. We don’t eat until 9pm.
By the time the meal reaches the plates – and despite scaling them outside and cleaning up afterwards – there is a trail of fish scales through the saloon, the galley and as far as the starboard cabin. Nor are they the worst of it. I had been aware when I bought them that a third of the fish was head (with enormous mournful eyes) but what I could not have known is that most of the body was taken up with a massive skeleton. The edible bit left over has no texture and no taste, but we are even denied a good chew at it because bits of pointed bone have come loose in the cooking, any one of which could have perforated any part of our digestive tract on its way through.
As we settle into bed the night is rent by thunder, lightning and quite a lengthy hailstorm. Very noisy in a boat, hailstones. Sleep is out of the question, for a time at any rate. The hailstorm is followed by torrential rain. Having got all that over with, the night becomes blissfully quiet and we wake in the morning to a clean boat and windows that positively sparkle.
The data on Navtex today concerns an English and a French trawler sinking near Cherbourg. Unfortunately there is nothing to help a yachtsman wondering whether to leave Mazarron for Alicante. Only later do we discover that freak weather conditions are responsible for us picking up Navtex data posted by and about countries other than Spain.
While I sweep up more fish scales which have mysteriously appeared in the galley during the night, David sets off to try and find a weather forecast more recent than the five-day-old one in the marina office window. He finally gets one from the local diving club. It consists of:
‘Where you heading?’
Alicante.
‘Bueno!’
He decides to risk it but stay close to the coast so that we can run for cover if necessary.
While waiting for him to return I feed the young ducks swimming around us some of the bread bought in town the previous evening. Its crust is now so tough that I have difficulty breaking it into pieces for them, and I notice that instead of the usual snatch and gulp they hold each piece underwater and soak it thoroughly before attempting to swallow it.
38
Mazarron to Alicante via Torrevieja
We leave Mazarron at 10.20, taking much care over the lazy line. After half an hour the wind rises enough for us to have a sail. Twenty minutes later it drops to nothing. We take in the genoa and motor in a dead calm. A large dragonfly drifts over our stern. It is a lovely, languid, sunny, lazy day; a day for swimsuits and putting your feet up, reading and doing a crossword. It couldn’t be more different from yesterday. Nevertheless, David has several bolt holes planned just in case. The first is Cartagena but the weather is so serene we sail on. The next is Cabo de Palos, but we pass that one too. It’s fortunate that we don’t need it, because a closer reading of the cruising guide reveals that the maximum boat length accepted there is thirty three feet, and Voyager is forty. As we turn this cape the wind increases enough to get the sails out again, but in less than an hour it is calm once more. With such light winds we are not going to make it to Alicante today. As we are approaching Torrevieja by early evening we decide to spend the night there.
According to the cruising guide there are two anchorages inside the harbour. The one on the right has no-one anchored in it, however, just a large commercial boat tied up to the harbour wall. If there are other yachts about and there is a large empty area somewhere, it’s a pretty sure bet that there is something wrong with it. There are anchored yachts to the left, however, so we drop our hook there. It is a lovely gentle evening with no flies and the big tourist town beyond the marina just a distant hum. More fish scales appear in the galley.
We are woken at 2am by the wash from a fishing boat. Sometime later we sit up and listen to a rumbling noise. We go on deck but never do work out what caused it. We also have that noise again. Since Almería it has manifested at every berth. They had all been concrete and I could accept the explanation of water lapping. But now we are at anchor, and the noise is still there. In fact, it is louder than ever. It is like fire crackling, or rustling polythene bags; a loud, constant clicking. We open all the cupboards and lockers to listen to the various electrics, and even stick an ear against the wall clock to see if the mechanism has suddenly grown louder. It is driving me mad. I lie in bed listening to it.
‘Can you hear osmosis?’ I ask plaintively. ‘Or antifoul disintegrating?’
‘Gotosleep,’ he mumbles.
We lift the anchor at 10 o’clock in a calm, clear morning. We still have no forecast, but it is only 25 miles to Alicante. The wind is light and it is another bright, sunny day, another day for swimsuits, but given the erratic nature of the weather David has another bolt hole or two earmarked. Our route is taking us towards the Islas de Tabarca a small island at the western end of the bay in which Alicante is to be found. A couple of buildings are vaguely visible on the crest of the island but it looks de
serted.
One might think that keeping track of one another when your living area is only forty feet by sixteen would be simple, but it isn’t always. During the afternoon I leave David in the helmsman’s chair, go down into the saloon, through the galley and into the starboard cabin for a book. Both of the after cabins are stuffed to overflowing with them and the one you want is usually in the second cabin you look in – or in the first one, only you didn’t look properly. On the way back I hear a splash. It is only noteworthy because it is louder than normal but when I get back to the cockpit the helmsman’s chair is empty.
I peer through the windscreen to see if David is on the foredeck and then down into the saloon. I rush to the stern to look for a bobbing head, and then run down into the port hull in case he’s gone into the workshop. I dash back up on deck. Maybe he was lying head down into one of the foredeck lockers when I’d peered through the windscreen and I’d not been high enough to see him. I climb over the coaming and run down to the foredeck. David is nowhere to be seen. I stare out to sea again and yell his name.
Panicking now, I run back to the cockpit ready to put man-overboard drill into operation. Fortunately, because the wind had recently died, we had put away the sails and are now motoring, so all I have to do is turn Voyager through exactly 180 degrees to retrace the course we have taken. What horrifies me is that I should be able to see him in the water but I can’t. As I scramble back into the cockpit, scraping my shin very painfully on a winch in my anxiety, there he is, just climbing back into the helmsman’s chair with A Cruising Guide to Italy under his arm.
He takes one look at my face and says, ‘What?’
‘Don’t ever do that again!’ I roar at him.
‘What?’ he says. ‘What?!’
By 12.45 the buildings on the small island of Tabarca reveal themselves as a church with a walled cemetery, a tiny village, a fortress-like building and an elegant lighthouse. And two trees. When we get abreast of its north-westerly side, facing the coastline, we can see that the island is far from deserted. There are dozens of people at the water’s edge which is also chock-a-block with pleasure boats and rows and rows of fishing rods silhouetted against the sky.
While we are busy noting the deceptive appearance of the island, our depth gauge drops from 39 metres to five. We had expected it to reduce sometime soon, but not that much that soon. It all had to do with the navigation buoy to our left which was guarding the shallows, and which David had insisted was a yacht, and which I’d stopped watching through the binoculars to have a look at the island instead, and we have one of those moments which are initially loud with mutual recrimination and then very quiet as we nose slowly towards deeper water again. Meanwhile, beyond our stern, a local ferry shuttles more people to the island. The next time we see Tabarca it is not a Saturday afternoon, and it looks more as it had from out at sea and much more like what it once was.
I get out some eggs for lunch. It is strange to buy eggs in a box of ten – a metric unit, instead of six – an imperial half dozen. Then I notice the picture on it.
‘David,’ I say, holding the box towards him. ‘These eggs we bought at Almería. How did you know they were free range?’
He glances at the box, looks sheepish, and then sets off purposefully towards the cockpit as if he’s suddenly remembered something urgent that needs doing there.
‘It was the picture on the box, wasn’t it?’ I call after him. ‘These chickens walking about with smiles on their beaks?’ There is a clatter from the gas locker masquerading as essential maintenance. ‘Ad Man’s dream, you are!’ I shout over the noise.
The texture of the bread is now so dense that it makes no difference whether I cut the crusts off or not. I abandon it along with the eggs and take the big fruit bowl up into the cockpit instead. Our appetite these days is for lighter food and less of it.
By 2pm the sun is so hot we have to put on protective clothing. It is hard to believe that we are well into October. The sea and sky are an extraordinarily bright blue. A plane flies low with home-going holiday-makers. David watches it. ‘I bet it’s raining at Manchester airport,’ he says, pulling his shirt collar up to meet the brim of his panama hat and prevent the back of his neck from burning. Whenever we had arrived home from a couple of weeks somewhere warm the pilot had always announced, with a cheerfulness bordering on sadism, that it was raining at Manchester airport.
Out to sea a cargo ship’s captain with a Scandinavian accent calls, ‘Alicante Pilot, Alicante Pilot’ amid crackle and static. No-one responds. He calls again. And again. Ultimately something incomprehensible crackles back. Communication at sea is a bit like meno-pause – a lot of the time it’s a complete blur out there.
39
Alicante
We approach Alicante’s harbour entrance neck and neck with a Spanish yacht. David says, ‘Let him go first. We’re in no hurry.’ We have always taken the view that we are guests in other people’s countries and try to act accordingly. David cuts back our engines and I wave the Spaniard through. He stares at us. Then he stops his engine and goes below for binoculars and returns on deck to stare at us through them. I make my gestures large: left arm extended, right arm waving him in. He puts down his binoculars and shrugs in puzzlement. Both yachts wallow. With our entente cordiale beginning to clutter up the harbour entrance, David decides to take the initiative and moves forward.
As we enter the harbour, a huge cargo ship leaves the commercial dock to our right and reverses out in front of us. Its skipper would undoubtedly have announced his intention to depart, but we have been too preoccupied by our pas-de-deux with the Spanish yacht to notice. Then the cargo ship begins its ponderous 90° turn to point its bow towards the harbour mouth and the open sea – and straight at us. A small power boat emerges from behind its stern and roars down its starboard side. This is also the only route we can take to avoid the cargo ship, so we have no option but to head in the direction of the small power boat. Then a large power boat roars out behind the small one, followed by a jet ski. They all hurtle down our port side. For no reason other than that its owner wants to have a look at Voyager, the large power boat then crosses our stern, roars down our starboard side, across our bows and back up our port side again, effectively circling us at high speed. The wash is incredible and sends us plunging. I am on the foredeck, ready to spy out the marina’s waiting pontoon. Clinging to the rails in a desperate attempt to stay upright, I look back at David to see why he isn’t steering into the wash. But he isn’t at the helm. With our boat’s name being called repeatedly on the VHF as we enter a foreign port, and given our proximity to a large commercial ship in the process of manoeuvring, he had felt obliged to go below and answer it. It is the Spanish yachtsman asking what we wanted.
‘I was inviting you to go first,’ says David.
‘Oh!’ says the Spaniard.
There is a pause and then the line goes dead.
At the fuel-cum-waiting dock a young man with a friendly face and neatly dressed in navy blue gets ready to catch my bow rope. But at that moment – in accordance with the laws of sailing which require the wind to rise dramatically whenever you approach or leave a pontoon – the slight breeze by which we had entered rises to an onshore wind of 16 knots and my rope hits him in the face. He accepts my profuse apologies with a touching courtesy.
A couple of holidaymakers in dark glasses and bile-green T-shirts are on the dock when we arrive. They both stare fixedly at us for the whole half hour that it takes to tie up, refuel and be allocated a berth. It is eerie and I wonder if this is what it must be like to be famous. Two Spaniards in uniform, with guns in their holsters also come and look at us then go away again. Meanwhile, in a corner, I spot that magic word Lavandaria. Washing machines!
We are allocated a finger pontoon down the far end of the marina and the wind does its best to drive us onto it in the most awkward way possible. In the circumstances, however, we berth almost gracefully. I am particularly glad when I spot the smug coup
le from Mazarron a few boats down, watching us like hawks. Even if we had fouled it up, though, I feel we could still have claimed the moral high ground. Because, unlike them, we hadn’t slipped out of Mazarron without paying the mooring fee. Inevitably, we have no sooner finished tying up than the wind drops away to nothing.
The marina’s office is closed until 5pm. Since we can’t register until then, our next job is a trip into town to find an ATM. It refuses to yield up any money but we are approached by a very polite young couple with excellent English who say they are having difficulties changing money and want to do a deal with us for our English currency. It is siesta, the streets are empty but for us. We anticipate either being robbed when our wallet comes out to oblige them, or becoming involved in something illegal like currency dealing or money laundering that will involve a long stretch in a Spanish prison. So we make our excuses and leg it to another ATM which obliges with some cash. Everywhere is closed except the restaurants, of which there are many.
Before we left England David bought a couple of short-sleeved rugby shirts in a sale. One of them is in Australia’s green and gold and sports the national rugby team’s kangaroo motif on its breast pocket. I hate it because it bleeds copious amounts of yellow dye everywhere the moment it comes into contact with water, and in consequence has to be washed separately from everything else. It had, indeed, been among those hand-washed items drying in the cockpit the day I fell foul of the Portuguese Navy. David finds it very comfortable and has put it on for the trip into town. It is pure coincidence that Australia’s rugby team has very recently beaten England’s.
Sitting in one of the restaurants fronting the marina are four stiff-necked, middle-aged, choleric English types – two in blazers and grey flannels, two in frocks. Observing David approach in his green and gold rugby shirt one of them mouths ‘Bloody Australians!’ to the other three. All four glare at us, the speaker’s grim memsahib the hardest of all. David gives them a huge grin as we pass their table. ‘G’day Poms!’ he says in his best Rolf Harris. ‘Good game, eh?’
Dolphins Under My Bed Page 21