After catching up with Elaine’s sister, Dianne, on the latest developments concerning her dad, we both tried to nap, but gave up with all the bouncing around we did in the wakes of the speedboat revellers out again in full force. Instead we hopped in the dinghy and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening ashore.
First, coffee and cake was enjoyed at the Cultural restaurant, where we lingered in the coolness of their lounge and finalised our route from Mallorca to Ibiza and Formentera islands. Then a stroll along the waterfront and finding a shady spot on the beach passed some time until dinner, enjoyed at the Himalayan Curry House. The last time we enjoyed a curry was in Malaysia and this meal was definitely a delicious treat to rival that of the Kapitan restaurant in Penang.
By the time we returned to Paw Paw the wind had died down and the churned up sea state from all the revellers had settled, both ensuring we didn’t get drenched in the dinghy.
This morning Roy was up earlier to take advantage of the calmer conditions to clean Paw Paw’s bottom. Then, after breakfast, he took a bus to the local industrial park to purchase engine oil, while Elaine did the laundry. However, on his return, he was unfortunately unable to do the engine oil changes today, something which really only needs to be done in Gibraltar, but he wanted to make use of our downtime, only to remember we were out of oil filters; a very unusual circumstance on Paw Paw, but, since we were unable to source them in Turkey after he’d depleted our stock getting Paw Paw ready for the season, we figured we wouldn’t need to do another oil change until Gibraltar, but we’ve done a lot more motoring than we ever thought we’d be doing. In fact all we’ve done is motor. No harm, no foul, though, as we can source them here or in Gibraltar and he did the saildrives and dinghy oil changes in the interim. Afterwards he also did another diesel run in the dinghy and had a bunch of local kids out on a kayak excursion for entertainment, while Elaine had a nap.
The good news of the day, however, was that Elaine’s dad was discharged. We’ve no idea what caused these particular episodes and neither do the medical fraternity actually, putting it down to the usual diagnosis of “heart failure”, although each of the last three episodes have been entirely different; guess we’ll chalk it up to old age and be grateful that he’s still this side of the grass.
What we weren’t pleased to learn was that the Orca attacks have now spread to La Linea in the Bay of Algeciras / Bay of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean Sea along the Spanish coast near La Alcaidesa and Sotogrande, right where we’re heading in the next few weeks, with four attacks in all happening yesterday in these two areas; just dandy! During this circumnavigation we’ve dealt with unpredictable weather and numerous storms that locals said they’d never encountered before, a late season cyclone, a rogue wave that dismantled our steering system in a matter of seconds, a pandemic, pirate alley en route to the Suez Canal, a serious medical diagnosis for Elaine that we didn’t see coming and which is bringing our sailing days to an end prematurely and now orcas! Really!
Setting that concern aside, our day ended with a gelato ashore and a walk along the waterfront to enjoy the cool breeze before retiring to bed.
