Teri and George continued - Costa del Sol

All sails up, with winds ENE most of the night (10-12kt
winds). All night following seas made us
feel we were riding a slow bucking bronco.
We worked our 3 hour shifts again and only had one needed boat deviation
when a fishing boat came steadily at us with all their lights blazing,
but. We assume the captain must have
been asleep at the helm, or just plain out to get wandering sailboats.

The Reception and fuel dock

We arrived in Almerimar around 1:30 the next day (Oct 21) and stopped at the fueldock to
check-in and top off our fuel. Very
friendly, huge marina with tons of empty condo's and many shops, most of which
were closed. We did find one of the
larger Super Mercado's for shopping which is always a plus. Seems Almerimar is one of the Winter
live-a-board communities along the coast.
George set off to make friends with a boat Evergreen tied down the
Quay. We would later bump into them
sailing with Niki, John and Ron.

Had a big lunch around 2:30 AT Franc’s on the Quay which
proved to be a very nice restaurant. Our
dinner was tapa’s on the boat and then to bed.

On Thursday, Sept 22, we got ready to leave around
9AM. Again a no-wind day so set Auto
pilot for our next stop at Marina del Este (Punta de la Concepcion o’mona. It was a great lazy day for reading and
napping on the boat. Along the coast, we
saw countless “farms” or greenhouses known to be some of the biggest suppliers
of winter vegetables for North Europe.

We arrived at Mona around 4:40 and ate dinner at a lovely
Quay side called Buona Sera. The owner
Chema was also our waiter and did not speak much English, but would call his
other server over to translate for us.
We took some group photos and he gave us his “business” card that had a
great picture of him and his chef. After
dinner we had a quiet cocktail hour on the boat with one of our finds at the
last super market. Rum Baily’s. Quite good!
I can tell you the bottle did not last very long on the boat!

We made plans for early checkout and left the next morning
at 7AM. Still dark outside and only 2 kt
winds. Our first plan was to stop in
Malaga to change crew, but found that Malaga was not a very well liked marina
for yachters like us. The next marina
was in Benalmadera and was a stupendous, large harbor with good beaches on both
sides of the harbor. We checked in, filled the tank and got our berth
assignment. This marina was more like
Atlantis in Bermuda but downsized. The marina
was well set-up for the tourist that has some money to spend. Our berth was in front of condos in a high
security “island”. Ron arrived around
1PM and got settled in the boat as George and Teri were packing for their
departure. We had a great Friday night
there eating sushi takeout on the boat from a Quay-side restaurant.