The 16th July is the feast day of Virgin of Carmen, who looks after the sea and sailors. When we arrived in La Coruna on her fiesta last year it was being celebrated with great gusto, as it is all over Spain. It felt good to leave Melilla for the 160 mile passage to Cartegena on her feast day.
The forecast was westerlies 3-4 all the way across the Alboran Sea and then south-westerlies once north of Cabo de Gato, the south eastern corner of Spain. A good wind for a passage almost entirely set for a course of 034�.
Life at sea is never that simple.
In the lee of the headland of Melilla the wind was a northerly, so we bounced our way up to the rocks, where our helpful neighbours at Melilla had told us we would find a nice east setting current. To our delight, we found the current, and the wind came in from the west. For a short while, we creamed along at 5.5 knots. A pitifully short while. As the dusk fell, so did the breeze and eventually the engine went on.
About midnight, we were both on deck, peering anxiously at red flashing lights unmarked on any chart and unknown to us. They had that peculiar intensity that looks a long way away until you are right on top of them. Suddenly the first one was almost beside us, and from it streamed the plastic bobbles of a tunny net. We managed to get out of gear and the engine off before our propeller met the net. The main and mizzen were still up and we sailed gracefully over the top, sweating.
A fishing boat came bustling up, not prepared to use the radio but flashing lots of lights. He used a very powerful search beam to direct us on to a new course. Due west. We got the genoa out, furled a bit to help our view, and sailed along the net, directed by the silent fishing boat. To our great good fortune, the breeze stayed both strong enough and in the south west to help us sail while within the most dangerous area.
After about an hour, we sailed over the next edge, and hoped to turn back onto our course. Not a chance. After some 6 miles and two hours, our sentinel peeled away and we found the corner. We settled back on the right course for Cabo de Gato, and Pip got her first shut-eye of the night.
We chugged along in very little breeze in the dark, past the corner of another large net (or maybe a dogleg of the first one). This corner was alive with dolphins, maybe showing us the safe water, or hoping for their own by-catch. At dawn, the breeze returned, and we could sail, albeit pretty slowly, towards the cape.
There's quite a lot of traffic in the area. The mid-morning breeze allowed us to jibe and sail directly west, keeping south of the lanes. The big excitement was seeing another turtle. They move surprisingly fast; we were doing about 3.4 knots, and before you knew it, going the other way she was out of sight. By early afternoon we could turn back north and continue sailing. But, again at dusk, the wind died and we motored during the dark.
The dawn breeze filled in a little, and the picture shows Pip at the helm as we sailed north east close hauled. This is Roaring Girl's fastest point of sail, but even so there was so little wind we barely reach 4 knots.
We saw a large marine animal we are almost certain was a whale. It was a completely different shape from a dolphin, with a large square head and a fin that was almost shovel shaped. It stayed on the surface a long time, too, quite still, which dolphins don't do. A book of marine mammals is urgently needed, as we only have one about fish on board!
We sailed to within half a mile of the breakwater at Cartagena, and finally arrived at 46 hours at sea, with a dismal average speed of 3.5 knots. But we're not complaining. Whether it was the dolphins or the Virgin of Carmen, we are grateful that we escaped the tunny net, and had enough breeze at the time we most needed it!