Adra Overnight

Adra. (Terry)

Never heard of it.  Nor had I until yesterday afternoon.  We left Gibraltar late-ish in some fog and wandered our way eastward through massive container ships, fuel tankers, small traders and lots of yachts going in all different directions.  Everybody’s got somewhere to be.

 

 

Passing silently at 15 knots

We didn’t get a lot of sailing in.  Every time we pulled the sails out it was the death of the wind so we kept putting them away.  We went on through the night to get some distance up and morning saw us headed for here, Alda, or Almerimar.  I was tired and this was closer so in we came. 

We are anchored off the main town beach, just outside the yellow “don’t go’ buoys.  Huge mountains in the background, pleasant foreshore in front.  After a sleep, we put the dinghy in the water to make our way into the marina to see about fuel.  It only made about 200 yards and the Honda died.  Coughed and spluttered and jerked and stopped.  No amount of fuel-bulb-squeezing or starter-cord-pulling made a difference so we sculled back to the boat and put the engine away.  We then decided to row to shore and walk up the promenade.

 

Breakwater and the mountains

This we did and pulled the dinghy up on the sand.  A lady who had just finished her sunbathing and swimming session talked to Carol and said the dinghy wasn’t safe as there were lots of druggies in the area and we should ring the cops.  Great idea for the dinghy, but not for us as we hadn’t bothered to check in.  In fact, we checked out of Spain in Cadiz some weeks ago, even though we’ve been to Barbate and Ceuta since then.  No one seems to mind, though.

Anyway, we decided to move the dinghy down the beach a bit to where a group of older type ladies were lying about getting warm.  We then walked up the promenade and shock horror we found a bar!  Couldn’t pass it up and ordered tapas and beer.  Estrella Galicia, my new best beer in the world.

 

 

The view from the bar

Then all hell broke loose.  First one cop car, then another – four Guardia Civil guys on the walk above the dinghy.  Since none of the old ladies seemed to be wanted for murder, we guessed it was our dinghy causing the problem.  I went over and luckily, for once, I had our passports and a full set of ship’s papers with me.  That seemed to calm a couple of them down and the 9mm sidearms stayed put.  Then the lady Carol had talked to arrived and it turned out that she had called them and said the dinghy was at risk.  They assumed that it had been nicked, or the engine had been nicked.  Eventually one of them asked “problem or no problem” and I assured him ‘’no problem’’.  Everyone was happy and passport numbers were written down, they established that we were not Americans but Australians and then we began going around the badges on my backpack. Carol had just sewed on Cadiz and Ceuta and the small Guardia guy actually came from Ceuta.  He was mightily excited about that and I told him how much we had enjoyed the place and he positively beamed.  I wasn’t lying either – it was great.

A couple of Tapas dishes and some Estrella Galicia and we were contented.  A stroll along the promenade, which was just starting to come to life and Spain was once again the only place you’d want to be right now.  We sat on the low wall of the walkway for a while with a Chinese guy and watched Adra’s citizens go by then rowed back out to Common Sense.

Carol’s out the back fishing with live worms we bought in the Bazaar across the road and the boat’s rocking side to side.

We’ll fix the dinghy tomorrow and worry about fuel then too.  At the moment, we’re both relaxed and contented.

History:-  Adra was the last place the Moors held out in in Andalusia.  The king, Boabdil, departed from here.  I think from memory he’s the bloke who got home to Morocco and his own mother said he should have come home tied to his horse, not riding it (i.e. dead)  Nice one mum.