Turtles in Our Wake

by Sandra Clayton

  David clearly does not fit the driver’s stereotype of a yacht-owner. He makes him stop the taxi before he enters the terminal, pays and gets out. Then, overloaded with shopping, he has to trudge round a huge complex of buildings to get back into the marina.

  Four loads of washing finally get finished at 3pm and fill the boat’s rails twice over. I can’t be bothered waiting for the dryer.

  We get up at first light Sunday morning, wash Voyager down with soapy water and hose her off. Then we do her bright work with that cream cleaner most people have under the kitchen sink. The stuff you buy in a chandlery to polish a boat’s chrome and stainless steel costs fifteen times as much as a bottle of sink scrub which is just as good. Then there is the ironing and letters to write.

  We go to the post office and the market next morning. As the fresh fish stalls are closed on Mondays we had planned to buy chicken upstairs, but while buying fruit, vegetables and bread on the ground floor we notice a stall selling sardines in bulk. The stall holder is a charming man and gives us a third of a kilo (sixteen sardines and enough for a good plateful each tonight) in exchange for a 100 peseta coin or 40 pence.

  Back at the marina we top up our water tanks, return our shower block key and water connecter to reception and despite a brisk wind make a rather stylish exit, only there is no-one about. There never is when you do anything well, only when you mess it up horribly. It is sunny but cool on the move and the wind quickly shifts round to the nose.

  40

  Tabarca

  After Alicante, our intended destination is Torreviejo but we have travelled only eight miles when the sea becomes so bumpy and uncomfortable that we decide to anchor in the shelter of a tiny fortified island, the Isle de Tabarca, and see if it settles overnight. This is the island we had passed one Saturday afternoon last year on our way east. At that time it had been bristling with visiting fishermen, hemmed in by rows of pleasure boats and swarming with visitors constantly arriving by ferry. None of them is here now so, early next morning, we go ashore.

  Several centuries ago this island was a base for pirates. After they were finally driven out, a small fortified village was built and garrisoned to prevent further occupation. Its defensive walls, small fort and surprisingly large church dedicated to St Peter, patron saint of fishermen, are crumbling now but made picturesque by palm and pine trees and red bougainvillea. The villagers live frugally from fishing, as they have always done, and quite isolated from the material abundance of mainland Spain just three short miles away.

  Touchingly, as you pass through the gateway in the great stone defensive wall there is a home-made street plan to guide you, although there are only a handful of tiny streets. They are unsealed, but there are no vehicles anyway. The village square is only differentiated from the road around it by a neat line of carefully-laid stones and terracotta pots with little palms in them.

  The terraced houses are small and neat with lace curtains at the windows and despite the earliness of the hour the women are already out sweeping the tiled pavements in front of their homes and the dirt roads beyond them. Heaven knows what it must be like for dust here when the wind really blows, but it is noticeable at the tiny café where we have our breakfast that the cash register is wrapped in cling film. Flags are out in the streets and a bier, the sort on which four men carry a saint’s statue through the streets, lies on the ground outside the church as if a festival has recently taken place.

  The people that you pass meet your eyes, consider you briefly and then greet you courteously; impressive in a place that spends much of its time deluged in gawping visitors. The island’s cats are wary but the dogs have no interest in strangers at all and hurry about their business. All the dogs resemble one another, with curly fur and amiable faces, as if long ago an Airedale had fraternised with something smaller and more cheerful and has interbred ever since. Below the walls the fishermen who have spent the night out on the rocks are wading back to the village with their bedrolls balanced on their heads. We leave the island and return to Voyager with a sense of having stepped back in time.

  41

  The Costas

  The sea is calm now after yesterday’s agitation so we resume our journey to Torreviejo, which will be our last harbour until we reach Gibraltar. After Torreviejo we simply drop anchor each evening in a deserted bay, for although it is mid-August there is hardly anybody about. This is because the Costas are not cruising grounds, there being few sheltered anchorages. We are simply fortunate that the weather is being kind to us.

  As the bays are deserted at night, so is the shoreline by day. This absence of Homo sapiens heightens the sense of the primeval, for we are sailing down the edge of a land that once erupted as molten rock. In so doing, it created a coastline of extraordinary colours and textures. There is white rock like whipped cream adjacent to mocha coffee; pale greens and soft browns dotted with bleached scrub that looks from a distance like cotton wool balls; lumpy black is fused with smooth grey; there is yellow that looks as if it rose from the sea the colour and texture of butter on a warm day, arced and set; while grim volcanic grey, harsh as pumice, nudges soft eroding cream that seems illuminated from within, as if sunlight has been trapped inside it.

  In one place caves make huge gashes in the cliffs at sea level. In another, the upper cliff face is pocked by what look from out at sea like niches in a church wall. A handful of fishermen have scrambled down from the cliff top to stand in them, like plaster saints, protecting themselves from the furnace-blast of the midday August sun with large striped umbrellas.

  In a deserted bay, 19th-century industrial architecture crumbles. Apart from a wondrous circular building, only facades remain standing, stately and classical, among the spoil of opencast mining.

  These deserted stretches of coastline are the more surprising because they are part of the Costa Blanca and the Costa del Sol, two of Europe’s major holiday destinations. Yet, from the sea, the resorts which make them famous are negligible. They are simply part of a larger landscape, their teeming beaches bordered by others which are empty, or by deserted coves and spectacular cliffs and, all the while, behind them, are the towering peaks of the Sierras.

  Ahead of us, in the distance, dark, languid shapes appear in the water, followed by the sound of rushing air. Whales break the surface, sending great plumes of water rushing out of the blowholes on the top of their heads. They sink slowly back into the water again as we get close to them only to re-appear in our wake. After a few times you realise their appearance ahead of you is not a co-incidence. They wait there for you to arrive and then sink so that you pass over them. Perhaps the churning water from a boat’s propellers is pleasurable. Or maybe they are simply curious.

  And it is along this coast that we first become aware of another activity in the water, one that is inexplicable. A fin first, then a glimpse of a round silvery underside. The fin appears to be waving.

  42

  Tranquil Anchorages

  Cala Bardina, our first anchorage on this enchanting coast, is not even named on our chart. David will find its name in a library atlas long afterwards. We arrive early evening, have dinner in the cockpit and look out on a very beautiful bay. There is a stunning building of which Bavaria’s castle-mad King Ludwig might have approved, all ups and downs and terracotta roofs. Its glistening whiteness is set off by dark green palm trees and its golden lights shine out against the darkness of the hills behind it.

  Our second night’s anchorage is called Puerto de Genovés although it is not a port at all, just a sheltered beach with the odd villa. Nearby San José, however, while not suitable as an anchorage for the night, has a village. So next morning we stop off there in search of fresh food.

  We drop anchor and David rows us ashore. A sea swell, combined with a shoaling beach, is producing surf and we approach the sand in a flurry of white water. Surf is no problem so long as David balances the dinghy with the oars, and I leap out fast and drag it onto firm sand before the receding surf can dra
g it backwards, turn it sideways and tip it over.

  The village, just above the beach, has a supermarket whose current refurbishment has turned it temporarily into an object lesson in collision chaos and customer stress. People entering are immediately confronted by customers with shopping trolleys waiting to go through the checkout, and have to struggle through them to get inside. As you move through the supermarket you irrevocably arrive at its centre, which is a narrow passage containing a long counter at which you join one of three separate queues depending on whether you want fresh meat, cooked meats or cheese. The service here is slow, given all the traditional parcel wrapping, and queues of shoppers fill the passage. Unfortunately the congestion is exacerbated by the fact that at present this is also the only route to the checkout, where you again become part of the scrum between shoppers waiting to pay and newcomers trying to get in through the door.

  Before we began cruising, and with both of us working full time, David did our weekly shop for years. I worked miles from a decent supermarket while there was a splendid one around the corner from David’s office. He was, he said, also better equipped in the spinal department to stand in checkout queues and load and unload heavy bags, and I never argued. Like most men who shop, however, he liked to do it fast. Familiarity with the store’s layout meant he could shop, with an eye to freshness and economy, for the whole week in 30 minutes from entering the doors to unloading his trolley at the checkout. He had no interest in browsing and on the few occasions I accompanied him would become quite impatient if I paused to look at anything not on the shopping list and begin herding me ahead of him with his trolley.

  The queues at the meat and cheese counters now prove too much for him. ‘We’re only shopping for one day,’ he says, edging carefully around tiny ladies dressed in black as he navigates his way to the seething checkout. ‘The day after tomorrow we’ll be at a place with a big supermarket.’

  David has always been an optimist. I tend to err on the side of caution and like to have plenty put by for emergencies. It is not unknown for us to head for somewhere the cruising guide recommends as ‘ideal for re-provisioning’ only to find that either we cannot anchor there for some reason, or the weather makes it impossible to go ashore. Then we are off again at dawn the next day, as like as not to a deserted bay. I squeeze between the grid-locked shopping trolleys and follow him.

  Stumbling from the checkout onto the street we discover a pastry shop by following its heavenly smell. Crossing its threshold, however, is like walking into an oven, yet unbelievably it is also a café. Several people are sitting at tables but seem torpid in the heat. Drenched in perspiration and our lungs hot, we stagger back outside into a comparatively tepid 90°F (32°C) clutching a meat pie, a cheese and ham lattice and fruit slices.

  We load the dinghy for the trip back to Voyager, our fragrant cargo balanced amidships. David gets in and splays the oars while I push us out from the beach. It doesn’t take any strength on my part. I just need to time it so that the dinghy clears the surf created by the shoaling beach, David gets a good pull on the oars into clear water, I jump in and we’re on our way.

  Today, however, instead of springing lightly in over the stern I misjudge the exact place where the sand shoals. My right foot fails to connect with solid ground and, falling sideways, I end up scrambling into the dinghy the best way I can. I lie face down, half in and half out, surprised that even half of me has made it. The dinghy, made unstable by my lower half hanging over its port quarter, bucks like a bronco in the surf and tries to turn sideways. David meanwhile is looking anxiously behind him, to ensure that he is keeping the dinghy at right angles to the breaking waves that will otherwise capsize us.

  ‘At least get in the middle!’ he snaps with uncharacteristic irritation, unaware that my inert body is about to disappear overboard. At that moment, however, a large breaker hits us, the stern jolts upwards, and I slide into the bottom of the dinghy like a landed fish. Happily I miss the meat pie, which we have for lunch, still warm, with salad, crusty bread and a rough red wine.

  43

  Sea Mist

  Our anchorage tonight is Punta de los Baños, a shallow bay on the end of a point, or punta of land with an old castle to our left and a small lighthouse to our right. We arrive early evening. On the beach a young man with deadly earnest slaps, snaps, stretches, kneads, pulls and pummels a perspiring friend into a wetsuit too small for him. Only when the friend is hauled onto his feet, limbs stuck out sideways like a dried starfish and his face the colour of a ripe tomato, does the young man accept defeat and set about stripping him again.

  There is a large red sunset behind a large brown hill. At dusk the rock fishermen drift silently down the beach and settle themselves for the night. A light below its walls makes the old castle hauntingly beautiful against the darkness. The small lighthouse seems to be lit with a 30-watt bulb. It is a clear, windless night. The sea laps against the rocks below the fishermen’s feet and over our stern steps as we rock gently in a slight sea swell.

  There is heavy dew overnight and next morning it covers our decks and forms large glistening dewdrops in long even lines under every horizontal surface. As we move about the cockpit, preparing to leave, they drip from the boom and the edges of the wheel house roof onto our heads and down the backs of our necks. The whole boat glitters like a jewelled thing in the morning light. Tiny droplets of moisture illuminate the webs of the modest little spiders who weave their normally-invisible little larders underneath our rails, girding Voyager’s sides in finest gossamer. The davits, dinghy and back stays, colonised by a larger species, are strung with diamond necklaces.

  We raise the anchor and set off into a great red sunrise. The sea is glossy and sinuous in the early morning mist. There is no horizon and in the distance tiny fishing boats hang suspended in the shining blueness. As we move offshore the mist distorts even David’s spatial awareness and neither of us has the remotest idea of just how much visibility we have. We turn on the radar and find that the shore we have recently left, and which we can still just see, is actually over a mile away which is further than either of us had thought.

  Small day boats rarely show up on our radar, and fishing buoys never do, so I keep watch on the foredeck through mile after mile of blue-grey sea and the strange silvery light that the sun becomes when filtered through mist. Fish leap en masse and mid-morning dolphins arrive. There are seven of them. They slide back and forth under our hulls and swim between our bows, diving under and over each other. You never become blasé about them and always feel sorry when they leave.

  After watching for such a long time in this unrelenting brightness, tiny silver lights begin pinging behind my eyes. When these are joined by irregular grey patches, I think it is probably time to go and have a lie down. Even as the thought is forming, however, I find myself yelling, ‘Whales! Slow down! We’ll hit them!’

  We have no idea what most of them are and never encounter such a mixed bunch so close to us again. It is likely that the reason we have done so this morning is that they are resting after feeding and in the heavy mist have been caught unawares.

  By the time Voyager comes to a halt we are among them and a mass of large startled bodies scatter in all directions. Long grey whales arc slowly away sending great plumes of water through their blow holes as they go. Something twenty feet long, pale and flat with a mottled back and frilly edges, slides away beneath us. Some I recognise as bottlenose dolphins, only bigger than we have encountered before. Less cautious than the whales, instead of bolting they hover a short way off and once we increase our speed again come rushing back to swim between our hulls, turning their heads on one side to observe us leaning over the rails. Dolphins never miss an opportunity and, after the serious business of digestion, it’s playtime.

  Every once in a while the sun burns through the mist and wispy clouds are reflected in the flat water. Sometimes the mist is so dense there is no sun at all and visibility is reduced to only a few yards beyond the boat.
I finally get to shout ‘Land ho!’, however, as the brown peaks of the Sierra Nevada become visible and we change course for our destination.

  Gradually the mist lifts from the sea. It is littered with small fishing boats, the first vessels we have seen in five hours. The mist also lifts from the land, except for a deep blue band obscuring the waterfront altogether so that we look out upon four distinct layers: bright shiny sea, deep blue mist, brown mountains, blue hazy sky.

  44

  A Secluded Bay

  Nerja, the anchorage David has earmarked for tonight’s stop, and where the cruising guide says that supplies are available, turns out to be a teeming beach and holiday complex. With all the jet skis, pedalos, sailing dinghies and roaring little motor boats we decide to give it a miss and a mile further along the coast find a small bay. It has only a couple of day boats in it, and a wooden dinghy with a large canvas parasol in the middle and a man with a fishing rod at either end. We drop our anchor.

  It could not be more different from the bay we have just left. Rising vertically from the small beach is a cliff, with a terraced hillside on top. There is an ancient, single-storey house among the terraces with a vine above its door and two windows. A narrow path passes the house from the beach below to an unseen road at the top of the cliff.

  The beach itself, with rocks at either end and little depth, is more like a marine garden than a beach. There is lots of greenery and large cacti cascading down the cliff face and in one corner a family has created a multi-coloured summer house from beach towels, sarongs and beach mats. It has chairs and a makeshift table and all the accoutrements of eating out of doors. At the other end of the beach a couple in blue swimwear lie supine under blue umbrellas beside a small blue and white circular tent. Few in between have come unencumbered and no-one moves much all afternoon. It is Saturday and the locals are at their leisure, inclined to rest rather than frolic.