Cartagena to La Línea de la Concepción

Formentera - Cartagena - Cabo de Gata - Aguadulce - Almerimar - Almuñécar - Fuengirola - La Línea de la Concepción

We spend some thundery nights off Ibiza. We are woken up in the middle of the night by a jerk in the anchor chain and once on deck, we can barely see 10 meters because of the rain, spray, and lightning. Luckily the anchor holds really well in the sand and the thunderstorn quickly passes.

We sail back to Formentera, where we want to spend a leisurely day before crossing to Cartagena to relax and enjoy time as a family of four until the next visitors arrive.

We are quite exhausted, but we still think that Silvio should use the wind and go kitesurfing. He sets off with the dinghy and anchors it in front of the beach where he wants to kite. The wind is quickly getting weaker and the kite session is not great. Instead, the dinghy engine is flooded by the strong waves from the Ibiza-Formentera ferry and does not start when Silvio wants to come back to Mirabella at dusk. So he has to wade along the coast, towing the dinghy in 10 knots of wind. He rows the last few meters, quite exhausted. We’re taking apart the cover of the engine and rinsing everything with sweet water make sure there is no water inside the engine cylinders, which keeps us up late into the night. Getting the engine to run again will keep us busy for the next few days!

The next afternoon we set sail in the direction of Cartagena and, accompanied by waves and wind of around 20 knots from abaft, we experience a rather ‘bumpy ride’ to the Spanish coast. We are visited by a flying fish, which lands on our deck. We don’t realize it in the dark and so Andrea grabs the fish out of the toilet window instead of a supposedly flapping line on the deck and it gives her a real fright.

We look forward to the interesting city of Cartagena and the days in port. For the first time we spend a few nights in the port, on one hand, because we want to get the dinghy engine running again. On the other, because our next guests will arrive in Cartagena by bus from Alicante. Joséphine’s godfather Philip with Anna, Alice, and the one-year-old Artur accompany us along the Andalusian coast for eight days.

Cartagena is meant to be explored and enjoyed. The interesting history of this city is visible on every corner and we enjoy a long exploration of the city center with our friends.

What strikes us about the marina, is that there are mostly owner boats in the harbor, including some with children aboard. We look forward to meeting with other sailors who are also traveling with children for a longer time. We are excited.

The huge cruise ships docking right in front of us are interesting to watch, considering that the travelers in their cabins had their dinner in Casablanca the night before, admired the sunset, and are now visiting Cartagena for a few hours.

Even the mechanic working for the port of Cartagena doesn’t get our outboard to run but he fills our gas bottles — at least. Silvio takes the time to tinker with the engine and although it isn’t running yet, we head south.

We leave the port of Cartagena, knowing that we want to visit this wonderful city again.

We anchor in the evening near Águilas in the ‘Bahía del Hornillo’ amid fishing nets and in the morning we continue early and still in the dark towards ‘Gabo de Gata’. Unfortunately, there is no wind at all and so we sail with the engine to the south.

We anchor in front of the salt flats at Cabo de Gata and are fascinated by this scenery, which reminds us of the ‘Wild West’ with nothing but a beach, a church, and wedding couples having their picture taken with horses on the beach. Silvio is, again, tinkering with the engine and can’t get it to run — not yet.

The next morning we sail using our motor through the mystical fog and a mirror-like sea past fishing boats to Aguadulce in the next port, where we hope to get support for the motor problem. It turns out, that we cannot even find the place that was supposed to help us with the engine. Its google maps store listing is simply in the wrong town.

So, without any help available, Silvio decides to completely disassemble the entire fuel supply, including the high-pressure pump that goes to the fuel injectors, while the others spend their time on the beach and the playground.

We go to the restaurant for dinner and we get a video message from Silvio in which the dinghy engine is running – yeah! Well done, best Suzuki mechanic on board! Of course, we have to toast to that!

We are close to the Swiss sailing yacht ‘Daisy’ which we get to know here and we sure enough will meet again. The next afternoon, after shopping and a visit of the beach, we move on to Almerimar – under sail today, how great! In this large port surrounded by the ‘sea of plastic’ of greenhouses, we find a really delicious pizzeria. For days we pass landscapes full of white areas – vegetables and fruits are produced here and it is impressive how firmly the landscape is shaped by this.

We consider Almuñécar a good stop to see off our vistors, so they can catch the flight in Malaga the next day. On the way there we meet about 50 common dolphins, which not only pleases the children on Mirabella.

We spend the hours together on the beach and in the beach bar in Almuñécar until we wistfully have to say goodbye. The days together – with all the children, including Artur climbing all over the place, passed very quickly and we enjoyed the company enormously.

Apparently, boats at anchor are a rarity in this bay right in front of Almuñécar and we are approached by several people on the beach and visited by SUP. After the morning on the beach, we head to the next cove from where we take a dinghy with a working engine to visit the sanctuary and even go inside the cave ‘Cueva de las Palomas’ where swallows and bats fly.

Further west we anchor off Fuengirola amidst a bunch of badly marked fishing nets and lobster pots. Then another day of roaring engines awaits us. We decide to enter the port of ‘La Línea de la Concepción’ instead of Gibraltar.

We expected the Alboran Sea with respect – we expected a lot of wind, possibly in the wrong direction. We didn’t expect such an extended lull. Instead, we saw every single dolphin fin in this incredibly flat and calm water.

Here in ‘La Línea de la Concepción’ we will get ready for our first major passage to Graciosa.