13 – Cruising Spain’s eastern coast

This post brings us back from the Balearics to the Peninsula and cruising Spain’s eastern coast.

Lovely Ibiza and Formentera

Ibiza is great, if ever you would like to spend a holiday there. But we heard that it’s very crowded and noisy in summer in the main tourist areas, but I believe you can find quiet and laid-back corners even then. We had the privilege to see Ibiza and Formentera with an acceptable number of yachts and only few motorboats. The colour of the sea, the marine life (snorkelling), the bays… unfortunately we only saw a few but what we saw, we loved it.

Next, we sailed over to the peninsula, wanting to head south, but we had hopes that our navigation device, who had already given up reading our electronic maps and giving us navigation details in Tunisia, could be repaired in Dénia.

Finally, we ended up:

• with no quick solution for our navigation device (obviously!)
• ordering a 2^nd hand navigation device in Denmark that should arrive in our next planned harbour, Santa Pola, South of Alicante, within 3-4 days… inch’allah,
• having a fridge specialist come twice: after his first intervention filling in a little bit of gas for the cooling system, the freezer didn’t work at all anymore…!
• repairing the manual bilge pump, a legal requirement, – which had simply been reinstalled dysfunctional by someone conscientious! Only a mock test showed it not working,
• trying to repair the water pump that feeds all our sinks, which had been working fine up to that point, without realising that it didn’t need to be repaired but that the tank needed to be filled… Our water meter had decided to go on strike and Jean-Luc, trusting it, didn’t check the tanks level by sight. Hours wasted for nothing…
• spending 4 nights in Denia harbour – yes quite pretty, but completely not budgeted!

Not so beautiful

Travelling southwards, we had to discover the awfully overbuild Spanish coast. Not only in surface but in hight – we’re talking about skyscraper skylines! One can understand that the former probably quite attractive coast made tourists come, but nobody involved really thought twice about how seventy 25-story (or more) high buildings all in a row look on a flat sandy beach…

To compensate, we had a culinary highlight: now that our freezer was repaired, Oliver made us a Bonite-Tartar with mango, avocado, ginger and soya sauce. So yummy! Check out “we like food” in a couple of days.

Jean-Luc flew home from Alicante for a few days. We are in Santa Pola and will certainly discover some nice spots in the area. Not much more to report at the moment, just keeping you updated with some photos. Greetings to everyone!

Oh yes, just one more thing: we got the visas for Algeria! Hmm, maybe our letter to the Consulate and the Algerian Embassy in copy had something to do with it 😉.