A Life on the Ocean Wave
I’m not going to start this post by apologising for the lack of recent posts, or bemoaning the speed with which time passes, because that’s just dull. Of course it has not escaped our notice that the creating writing juices have not been flowing quite as frequently as we would wish, and we have had discussions over whether or not we should stop writing posts altogether. Trends move on, and ‘influencers’ talk about the power of video, TikTok, YouTube etc, but life is just too short to even attempt to keep up with what everyone else is doing. Call me old fashioned, but I do quite like to write and so the decision was taken this morning that the blog will continue!
With the decision to continue, we also decided we would get back to writing specifically about our life in Spain. Everything went a little haywire following the BBC TV programme, ‘Amanda and Alan’s Spanish Job’, but the dust has now settled and life has returned to some semblance of normality. In a future post, I may try and write down some thoughts in the aftermath of that particular project, as it certainly became all-consuming for quite a long time.
However, moving on….Boats.
I love boats and always have done.
Our family summer holidays were invariably spent on a boat on one of the UK’s waterways. I’m not quite sure why we, as a family, persevered, as nearly every boat holiday contained some sort of trauma: my father always lost his temper. He rammed a boat into the side of a lock on one holiday, creating a great big hole in the bow. My grandmother ran a boat aground on Loch Erne in Northern Ireland on another occasion, and my father’s over reaction caused my poor grandmother to bolt from the captain’s seat and scuttle across the deck, getting her foot stuck in a small bin in the process and then clatter onwards like a Temu Long John Silver. We probably remembered those holidays more for my father’s rants than anything to do with the tranquillity and beauty of the British waterways. Despite the PTSD, I still have a passion for boats - it’s such a slow way of life; time just grinds to a snail’s pace and you have gentle hours to take in the blissful surroundings.
Clearly, boating is not always quite so relaxing. For Andrew’s 40th Birthday celebrations, we hired a villa on Mallorca for us and 10 friends. As part of that trip, I had organised a boat trip with a former colleague of mine on the island. The boat was a sizeable RIB with a rigid hull and we all went whizzing up the coast from Port de Sóller. It was fabulous, until the skipper of the boat, at full throttle, hit a rock and nearly sent us all flying into the Mediterranean. His excuse was that the water level was lower than he remembered. What the actual…..? Andrew’s knee came into close contact with the fuel bulkhead, and the knee came off worse.
Mallorca 2015
On our first holiday together on Mallorca, we went sea-kayaking from Port de Sóller. At this time, I didn’t know every single thing about Andrew, and he may have mentioned something about not having done sea-kayaking before, which sort of passed me by. Off we went, with a flotilla of other sea explorers and a guide; Andrew and I were in individual kayaks.
The sea was calm, and the coastline beautiful. We spent some time in a sheltered cove, having a swim (avoiding the many jelly fish) and musing about what perfection this all was. Then it was time to return to harbour.
Anyone who has been on the Mediterranean around Mallorca will know that the sea can turn in a second, from a tranquil millpond into a raging, evil maelstrom. It took all my strength to keep the kayak moving going forward, as I tried to paddle into the waves and not get stuck in the churning troughs. I lost sight of Andrew and his words about not having kayaked immediately came flooding back, and I had a vision of his being dashed against the rocks and my having to tell his Father.
We both survived, although it was a close thing! We do have our own kayak, but we now stick to the calmer waters of the nearby lake. Andrew keeps going on about taking a paddle board out to sea, but he can forget that idea.
For Andrew’s birthday this year, I put aside all past near-death experiences and hired a motor boat on which to pootle along the Costa Tropical, sup some cava and eat some delicious jamón that my children had bought me for Father’s Day. Fortunately, my father was not there to mar the day, and the sea was gentle and fair. In fact, the trip was nothing short of fabulous and Andrew conceded that it may well have been one of the best birthday treats he had ever had. We’ve been on skippered yachts before, and although these trips have been lovely, there is nothing like being in control of your own boat, and going where the mood takes you. The colour of the sea, the warmth of the sun, spray flicking up from the bow, dropping anchor to have a swim in the clearest water and then lying back on deck to dry off. It really was blissful.
As a result of that trip, we both determined to go out on the water more often so, last weekend, I went to Motril Marina to get my Licencia de Navegación - a piece of paper that proves I have undertaken a course in emergency procedures and the Rules of the (watery) Road. It means that I can now hire a boat up to 6 metres in length, with a slightly more powerful motor, without a skipper and we can have adventures on the high seas.
On Friday, we’ll be off to Marina del Este once again to hire a rather splendid little motor boat, a Saver 660 WA, with our friends Liz and Mark, all armed with picnics and cava aplenty. We can’t wait! A trip to look for dolphins, go and see the Nerja Waterfall, catch up on lots of gossip, soak up the afternoon sun, avoid submerged rocks, and wish that my Grandmother was still scuttling off with one foot in a waste paper basket.
We hired our boat from alquilerdebarcoselite.es and they also run boat navigation courses.
