Dolphins Under My Bed

by Sandra Clayton

  At 5pm, equipped with funds, we arrive in the marina’s reception area – all marble floors and leather settees – to register. On a wall near the vast reception desk there is a huge and haunting painting of three women – old, middle-aged and young – and a boy, staring out of the picture. They form the base of a triangle. At its apex is a man, his head cut off by the top edge of the canvas. On its right, the wharf they are huddled on is slipping inexorably into the sea, under misty bowsprits and a grey, threatening sky. Trying to guess its meanings fills up the time for me while David fills in a form.

  Mast height?

  Why, is there a bridge?

  How many engines? How much horsepower?

  Why do they want to know?

  Engine number?

  ‘I don’t know!’ says David.

  ‘Invent one,’ hisses the Englishman beside him, also filling in a form. ‘Nobody ever knows their engine number.’

  It is £5.50 for the night with water and electricity included. We are provided with a disc to get into the showers and a fitting to enable us to connect our water hose to the tap on the pontoon. We have little fresh food left and it is too late to bother with shopping. With so many restaurants within walking distance, we decide to go into town and treat ourselves to dinner out.

  I set off for a shower. We are about as far away from the main facilities as you can get, but happily there is a small building housing two showers at the end of our pontoon. Its door refuses to open no matter what I do with the disc. This requires another long walk round this large marina to get a replacement disc from Reception. It is no longer any surprise to me that cruisers are rarely overweight.

  Finally within reach of a shower, I am just taking off my shoes at a leisurely pace when two middle-aged women enter: one short, dark and plump, and one tall, grey and thin. Wearing dressing gowns and slippers, they come through the door talking non-stop. I shove my shoes under the bench and dart past them into one of the two shower cubicles. In marinas there are so few facilities between so many people that you soon become light on your feet. And from form-filling to second disc it has taken an hour and a half for me to get to this stage.

  The two women talk and talk; not loudly but with extraordinary consistency. I wonder briefly if perhaps they are sharing the other shower, as their voices remain at such a constant level. Were one outside the shower and the other inside, surely the timbre would change as they talked over the noise of the water. Not that I pay too much attention as the water cascading over me is cold and most of my attention is given to getting out from under it as fast as possible. I dry myself and dress and when I get out they are still where I’d left them, in their dressing gowns, barely drawing breath. ‘Cold,’ I shiver. ‘Frio?’ says the plump dark one, and shivers too. And they both leave. Still talking. I see them again next day, pushing an empty pontoon cart between them, still talking.

  As it is nice to honour one’s host country by eating its national dishes we choose Spanish that evening. We should have stuck with the starter. It was generous in its proportions and very tasty: cheeses, salamis and small fresh fish. The wine was also good. I have never been over-fond of rice dishes but assume that paella prepared by Spaniards in Spain will be the best of all possible worlds. It is dreadful. A large pork bone, some bits of chicken, two cockles (one still firmly closed) and a huge plateful of odd-tasting, yellow rice. We leave it and move down the street to an ice-cream parlour for a gigantic sundae to take the taste away. It is very good.

  A disco somewhere beyond the quay continues until 6.30am. Fortunately it is far enough away to be just a hum, along with the traffic and the local dogs; unlike the noise in our hulls, which is louder than ever. We have rats behind the linings. There can be no other explanation.

  We spend Sunday morning exploring the town. It is only a short walk through the marina, past the al fresco restaurants, and you are on a busy road. Cross that and you are on a wide promenade lined with cafés under big, beautiful trees. There is an orchestra playing on the bandstand and little wooden chairs have been put out to enable music-lovers to linger in comfort.

  We wander through small leafy squares and narrow streets. We find a bread shop open, and learn that everything will be closed on Monday for Constitution Weekend. We stop at a church dedicated to Saint Sylvestre, with a dark blue tile cupola and bell tower. There are healthy-looking, twenty-something beggars at the door. A service has just finished and the well-dressed, mostly middle-aged-to-elderly congregation is filing out. Their exit is impeded by the young beggars, hands extended, in the narrow doorway. There is tension in the air, as the Christian concept of alms for the deserving poor collides head on with the cynicism of professional begging. Supplication meets resistance and falls back momentarily, only to push forward again more aggressively. As the ebb and flow of conflict spreads out into the narrow street, we take the opportunity to slip behind it and go inside. The church is dark, old and worn. It is also still very crowded. There is obviously a strong religious community here. We gaze at Saint Sylvestre’s skull in its glass case; and at a statue of Saint Rita and wonder how she met her martyrdom, not having heard of her before.

  The route back to the boat takes us past Alicante’s ruined castle which towers above the town and the marina. The promontory on which it stands is very high and very steep but has an elevator from the street which takes you to the top for only a few pesetas.

  There is another English catamaran opposite ours, with people on board, so we go over to say ‘Hello.’ Jim and Betty are from Kent and staying for the winter. They are very hospitable, dispensing much useful information along with the drinks. They are amazed to discover how cheap our rate is. ‘Grab it,’ they say. Theirs is two categories higher. We begin to think we should. A cheap winter in an excellent marina so close to such a nice town is not to be lightly ignored.

  Later the same afternoon a Spanish/Dutch couple from Valencia tie up alongside. Their English is excellent, and learning we are new to the area they lend us a book of aerial photography of the coast which is extremely useful for assessing anchorages.

  We decide on another evening meal out, but this time choose Italian. It is dreadful. The ‘seafood pizza on a bed of mozzarella cheese’ promised in the menu turns out to be four very small prawns on a bed of very greasy Cheddar, like cheese on toast only tougher. In a lot of places you can eat cheaply and well. This bit of seafront, this week, isn’t one of them.

  I am sorting washing on Monday morning, ready for an early dash for the lavandaria when a Swedish couple with a son and daughter arrive. We help them tie up and introduce ourselves, then I head for the lavandaria and David for the office to pay for two more nights and get the winter rate confirmed.

  Early or not, I have missed the washing machines. Both of them are in use. Pointing to the one on the right, Laura from Suffolk says, ‘That one’s nearly finished.’ And with a nod to the left adds, ‘My last load’s in that one.’ As she speaks, the machine on the right goes into its spin.

  ‘Great!’ I say, eyeing the long line of bags on the table beside her which is obviously her completed wash. ‘I was afraid this was going to take hours.’

  David enters looking crestfallen. A different woman is on duty today and says that the weekend receptionist made a mistake. We are category 7 not 2. We can have the first night at the original rate of £5.50 as we have already paid for that, but … David had talked her down to category 6, which is £15.50 per night, and although we would get 15% off for paying 3 months in advance, water and electricity would also have to be paid for. As compensation she has given him a laundry token worth 600 pesetas, around 25 pence. I suggest he go and tell Jim and Betty what our true rate is in case they are tempted to go and argue the toss in Reception and end up getting their own rate increased as well.

  Laura empties the contents of the machine on the right into the dryer but, as I reach for one of my bags, the laundry door bursts open and a small, dark-haired dynamo in her late thirties enters and star
ts throwing the contents the bag she is carrying into the machine. I begin to protest. She sweeps a magisterial hand towards the long line of bags on the table beside Laura while at the same time explaining that here your bags are your place in the queue, and her place is next. To reinforce the point she picks up the box of washing powder from beside the line of bags, measures some into the machine, drops in a token to set it going and sweeps out again.

  I look again at the long line of bags on the table beside Laura. ‘I thought they were yours,’ I say. She shakes her head.

  ‘They’re Annie’s,’ she says, adding, ‘She’s from Humberside. I only had two loads.’ She points to the left-hand machine again. ‘This will be finished in a minute.’ I wonder if Annie has some sort of radar relating to washing machines and will sweep in again when that one is emptied, too.

  In the meantime I return to the subject of winter berthing charges increasing almost threefold and say that, although we know a winter layover is inevitable, having begun cruising so late in the year we are not really ready to settle down yet. She asks if we have considered The Balearics. She says she and her husband lived there for some years and sailed throughout the winters, albeit beginning later and finishing earlier as the weather got colder. She suggests that David and I talk to her husband after lunch.

  The left-hand washing machine completes its cycle and as Laura empties it I scan the horizon through the window for the approach of the small, dark-haired dynamo from England’s North East. The minute Laura straightens up from the machine’s drum I cram my first load in with rather indecent haste. As she leaves she says she will tell her husband to expect us after lunch. Before I leave myself I make a note of the time the cycle takes so that I can get back before it finishes and establish my claim. Before leaving I carefully line up my bags. If this is the system then as far as the left-hand machine is concerned any queue forms behind me.

  I get my second load in unmolested but, when I return to put in a third, Annie from Humberside is rattling machine doors. Her washing machine and the solitary drier have both finished their cycles but their doors will not open. She goes off to find an attendant and returns with a man in overalls who ferrets about in a fuse box. Unfortunately, instead of releasing the doors, both machines restart their cycles. He shrugs and leaves. Annie watches her clothing embark on its second cycle with resignation. ‘I don’t know what size it’ll be when I get it back,’ she says.

  David has lunch ready by the time I get back to the boat. While I eat, with one eye on the clock, I tell him what Laura has said about The Balearics. Then I hoof it back to the launderette to get my latest load out of the machine and put in another; assuming, of course, that Annie’s problems haven’t spread. When I get there she has just fetched the attendant to her machine again. While I empty and refill mine she is disposed to talk.

  There comes a time for many cruisers when a lot of things go wrong in a short space of time and it can mean the beginning of the end of cruising for them. She and her husband have recently had their boat broken into and virtually everything of value stolen. They still have a flat back home they cannot sell because, as in our own locality, the property market has died. And the income they had been depending on to support their venture has just taken a sudden and dramatic dive. As if that weren’t enough, coming through the Strait of Gibraltar their boat had been caught in a drift net.

  ‘It was awful,’ she says. ‘It was a Saturday night and the fishermen were all drunk. They surrounded us and fired flares over us. They were still burning when they landed on our deck. It went on for hours. I was terrified.’

  The drier stops again and she goes off to fetch the attendant once more. I abandon any hope of using the drier short of spending the night here and take my laundry back to peg around the boat rails.

  We have a cup of tea with Laura and her husband, then I leave David to learn about locations and anchorages while I retrieve my last load of washing. Annie is now operating the fuse box herself every few minutes to get the drier to finish its current load. She looks balefully at the renegade washing machine. It has 50 minutes on the meter.

  ‘Every time I re-set the fuse for the dryer,’ she says, ‘it starts the washing machine’s cycle again.’

  Another cruiser arrives, weighed down with bags, and fixes a predatory eye on my machine. Mentally I multiply the number of bags of washing Annie still has waiting to be done by the cycle times of the washer (55 minutes) and the drier (45 minutes) and then double it to allow for two cycles per machine per bag. ‘You planning to spend the winter in here?’ I ask her.

  ‘At least it’ll be warm,’ she says.

  I bag my own washing and stop off at Laura’s boat. Her husband has been very helpful and has given David lots of ideas for winter cruising. Back on our own boat I festoon the remaining empty rails while David digs out what little information we have on board about The Balearics. We are beginning to like the idea of going there.

  Such is the warmth of a Mediterranean evening in mid-October that by the time we have dined our laundry is dry.

  Tuesday morning we have a mammoth shop-up at the big two-storey market building. Typically it is up a steep hill and miles from the marina. It has no name on it, just 1921 in big numbers on the front. It is packed with stalls, big and vibrant and bulging with produce, everything you could imagine. Swordfish steaks are ridiculously cheap and you buy bay leaves on the branch. There are different types of spinach, four kinds of melons, great pyramids of locally grown tomatoes and fresh dates straight off the palm tree and still on the stem. The dates are just as you see them growing on the trees along the town’s streets, like big, plump, buff-coloured acorns, not yet dark and wrinkled and packed into long narrow boxes with white doily edges and little plastic twigs down the middle like we get at home at Christmas. By the time we have added wine and mineral water from a shop around the corner we return to the marina like pack mules.

  After allowing time for our thoughts to settle we have begun to think seriously about The Balearics. We want more information and ask around for a bookshop which might sell books in English. We are told that El Corte Inglés, Alicante’s premier department store, sells books and will probably have cruising guides in English. After a considerable hike to get there we find nothing in English nor any charts or guides in any language, but I spot a very nice swim suit and David finds a hat to replace the Lifeboat Institution one that went overboard.

  Back at the marina we stop off for a chat with the Swedish couple next door. Their children are chalk and cheese. The little girl, around eight years old, prefers to spend her time reading below. Their son, about ten, is out in their dinghy, in his element creating a wash, outboard engine buzzing like an angry gnat, shouting excitedly to his father and filling the air with acrid blue petrol fumes.

  On board Voyager we have a crew meeting and decide to abandon plans to winter at either Barcelona or Rome. Rome, we have decided, is just too far away. Barcelona’s harbour, our neighbour Jim tells us, is very dirty and causes your hulls and propellers to foul up at an alarming rate; although we are later told by somebody else that the city’s social and cultural life makes up a hundred-fold for anything the bacteria in its water can do to your anti-fouling. For us, however, the desire is to go on sailing as long as possible and the best place to do this through the winter months seems to be The Balearic Islands.

  With the public holiday over, there has arrived that long-sought-after event: the refilling of our two gas tanks. Despite being in daily use for cooking, water heating and refrigeration since Tréguier, over two months ago, the current one is still going. But we cannot expect it to last much longer and having failed to get refills in Coruña, Bayona and Gibraltar we really have to succeed now. Jim is not encouraging, however. The local taxis won’t carry gas tanks, he says. He hired a car, but with a minimum three-day hire it made the gas quite pricey. We decide to try anyway and ask the marina’s receptionist if she will telephone the local taxi service and ask if one of thei
r drivers would be prepared to carry gas tanks. The taxi service asks what time we would like the cab. We put our flaking, 13kg tanks in bin liners to protect the taxi driver’s boot.

  It is quite a long way out of town, these places usually are, but at least we get to see a little of the countryside around Alicante. The driver delivers us to the gates, and we carry the tanks in. Two men accept them, and then the entire workforce goes off for a tea break. The taxi driver very kindly volunteers to wait, indicating that we might have trouble getting another cab way out here to take us back. The men ultimately return, fill the tanks, send us off to pay and the taxi driver loads them into his boot. When we get back to the marina, and before we are even out of his cab, he has them out of the boot, and into a cart ready for us to wheel them down the pontoon to our boat. We think this is splendid service, and tip him accordingly.

  As we heave our two tanks aboard, the Swedish couple’s son buzzes about in their dinghy making an even bigger wash than usual. It looks suspiciously like an attempt to drown his sister who, against her better judgment, has allowed herself to be persuaded into joining him. She sits pale and stiff, clinging on with white knuckles, determined not to be hurled overboard as he throws the tiller violently from side to side. The family leaves late afternoon.

  Meanwhile we make our preparations to move on as well. The weather is so wonderful it is difficult to believe that winter is actually approaching but, even had we been ready to settle, £15.50 a day plus electricity and water would have made for an expensive winter. We top up our water tanks and tidy the boat. David then goes to recover our deposit on the disc for the showers and the pontoon water connector and returns shaking his head. He has picked up a copy of the marina’s price list. For our size boat it quotes £5.50 a day for winter rates including electricity and water. We say farewell to the people who have been so helpful to us and cast off. Fortunately the marina provides a weather forecast, as today’s Navtex warnings are for the Adriatic.