Sam Brown, Camilla Hermann and their teenage sons Guy and Benedict spent last summer delivering their Westerly Storm Kalessin of Orwell from the East Coast to Portugal, ready to spend this summer exploring the Mediterranean.
The Easter holidays provided the opportunity to move the boat from Lagos, where she had spent the winter, through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Med. Camilla picks up the story:
All four of us flew out to Faro on March 31st. We took a day to recover, not feeling it auspicious to restart our voyage on April 1st, and headed down to Vilamoura on April 2nd after Kalessin had spent almost exactly six months in Lagos.
From Vilamoura (a huge but welcoming marina which we had visited last autumn) we headed into new territory, to Vila Real de Santo Antonio, on the river Guadiana which forms the Portugal/Spain border. It's a pleasant little town, much more typically Portuguese than most of the Algarve. On both days we had sunshine and excellent sailing.
The next day was our longest, around 60 miles to Chipiona in Spain, at the mouth of the Rio Guadalquivir which leads up to Seville. The wind was with us and apart from motoring out of the river we sailed almost all the way, averaging just under six knots.
Part of the marina, and most of the territory between the marina and the town, appeared to be a graffiti-covered building site, a pattern repeated with variations in Cadiz and Barbate. Sadly we didn't have time for the 55 miles up the river to Sevilla - maybe we'll make it another time.
On to Cadiz, as we wanted to cover as much ground as possible before the wind turned easterly. In the Straits of Gibraltar the wind blows either from the east or the west, at over 30 knots for more than 200 days a year, and battling into a persistent easterly or levanter would be no fun at all.
I spent a long time worrying about not making it, as our flights back were booked from Malaga! Cadiz is a stunning city, a grid of long narrow streets and big squares, lined with houses mostly dating from the 18th century. As it was Good Friday, everywhere we went we ran into Semana Santa (Holy Week) celebrations. Apparently deep-fried fish was invented in Cadiz and we enjoyed a splendid dinner of whiting, prawns, squid and garlic potatoes.
From Cadiz across the bay to El Puerto de Santa Maria, where it rained solidly for about six hours. I'm pretty sure it was colder and wetter in southern Spain than it was in the UK over Easter. We liked El Puerto a lot. There's a very pleasant club marina about halfway between the huge beach and the town. The only downside was the wash from the fishing boats leaving between 2 and 4am - although we were spared that on the first couple of nights because it was Easter.
As predicted the wind turned easterly for a few days but by Tuesday it was easing off and we continued to Barbate, a fishing village whose main asset is that it has the only marina between Cadiz and Gibraltar. (It does also have a lovely and deserted beach).
We battled into wind and current with poor old Kalessin making less than 3 knots at times through the waves. It's times like this we wish we had a 50hp engine instead of our modest 19hp.
Two nights in Barbate and we rose early expecting the wind to have gone around to the west. It hadn't. We hung around until lunchtime when it finally settled as a westerly and nosed out nervously into very choppy and confused seas.
Fortunately both wind and current stayed with us and we roared down the coast, around Tarifa where the wind was only 15 knots, and hurtled through the Straits, with its green mountains on either side, at speeds up to 8.5 knots over the ground.
Gibraltar is a very strange place. They use pounds sterling, speak English (but talk Spanish for the other half of the sentence), sell fish 'n chips, and yet it really isn't anything like England at all. The weirdest experience was shopping in Morrisons (still branded Safeway on the outside).
We did the full tourist bit - took the cable car up the Rock, saw the apes, bought spirits at £5 a litre etc. The marina is literally next to the airport runway, but that's not as bad as it sounds as there are not many flights each day.
From Gibraltar we headed out into the Bay which was very bumpy. As we headed down to Point Europa, the sharp bit which points towards Africa, the wind and waves both strengthened until we were dealing with a swell of 2 metres or so and winds of 25 knots or more. Then somewhere we crossed the invisible line between the Straits and the Mediterranean and as if by magic the waves went away.
Over the next mile or so the wind eased, until by the time we came out to the lee of the Rock on the eastern side we were having a perfect sail - still with one reef in, but as were making more than 7 knots (and with no tides any more) we felt we might as well leave it there.
Kalessin is now in Puerto de la Duquesa on the Costa del Sol, a pleasant and relatively peaceful spot. We originally intended to leave her in Morocco, but the cost and logistics of getting to Malaga airport and some uncertainty about security decided us on taking the safer and rather costlier option of the Costa del Sol.”
Kalessin will stay in Puerto de la Duquesa until May, when the planned next stage of the voyage will take her on to the Balearics.
For more information visit kalessin-of-orwell.blogspot.com
