28th May to 1st June Motril and Almerimar

We spent a very windy weekend at Motril in the very welcoming Yacht club. Dave finally worked out one of the reasons the bilge under our engine was getting so wet. This has been happening since we left Lisbon and it turns out that an innocuous looking pipe under the engine is actually the pipe for the pressure relief valve for our hot water tank.

Cara Mara was not behaving herself on the 37 mile motor from Motril to Almerimar, not only wasn’t the autohelm working but the gas alarm went off, causing us to switch off the gas and forego any thoughts of cups of tea (actually not a problem in the heat). When we arrived Wendy was muttering about selling the boat!

Luckily we are well within our schedule to meet our next crew member Biddy and Almerimar is a quiet and fairly cheap marina so we have decided to stay put, get a few jobs done, order a new valve from the UK and rent a car for a bit of land exploration.

The good news after a couple of days of investigation is that the autohelm problem was nothing worse than a loose wire, the apparent gas leak was a bit of oil on the sensor and the internet should deliver a new valve in a few days.

This area of spain grows much of europes winter vegetables. Every bit of flat and not so flat ground is covered in plastic. Not too pretty.

The offending pressure relief valve is under our bed but discharges under the engine.

The Sailing club at Motril has this rather splendid pendulum set up to indicate the direction of the wind