An Amel Super Maramu in the Mar Menor

Originally, we had no plans to enter this 11 mile by 5 mile hyper saline small sea —the Mediterranean being the big sea.   The charts that we have come to rely the most upon showed Peregrinus couldn’t make it at the first set of Westbound buoys.  Thereafter, we could –in paper– make it, but our Imray pilot book (2014) hints of silting and of irregular, unknown dredging periods.

We were fortunate, however, that along the way we’ve made Spanish friends with local sailing knowledge and who insisted we shouldn’t skip the Mar Menor, and so we decided to give it a shot.  After all, we’ve been known to enter places, from the Bahamas to New Brunswick, with one inch of water below the keel.

We carry three sets of charts of this salty lagoon east of Cartagena, namely

- Navionics (vector, charts fully updated three days prior)
- Instituto Geográfico de la Marina 1:50,000, 1996, (raster, MaxSea on iPad)
- Garmin Bluechart (vector)

It is Navionics that reads that the entrance channel is impassable by anything other than a canoe, and in fact its very chart of the Mar Menor has been presented by others on internet forums as demonstration that Navionics contains imaginary information of the Mediterranean.  However, other than here, Navionics has been good to us.  For all of Spain, Garmin is simply a rasterised version of the official Spanish charts.  And the most updated Spanish charts… are old (1996).  Having said that, the Spanish charts, while showing less detail than we like, show that Peregrinus should enter the Mar Menor without issue.

In any event, Peregrinus, which at the very worst has a draught of 2.2 meters fully loaded, and which has its sensors calibrated to show water below the keel, entered the Mar Menor without issue in January 2016, under the following conditions:

Wind during transit 6 knots
True wind direction 45 degrees
Barometer 1032 mb and increasing slowly

True wind day prior 6 knots
True wind day prior 30 degrees
True wind in Cartagena harbour prior week: 10 knots or less

Least depth seen: 3 feet below keel at the second set of physical buoys
(second set of physical buoys are the first set of buoys shown on all charts, entering from Med)
Second least depth seen: 4 feet below keel, 200 feet west of bridge

Tide: 3.5 hours before high tide
Tide coefficient: 56 (two hours before transit)
Tide range: -0.1 metre (low tide), +0.1 metre (high tide)

Current: 0.5 knots, estimated, Eastbound

Peregrinus, under sail, comes across another sailboat in the Mar Menor.  Note: no waves!  January 29, 2016.  Leica Typ 114.

Kicked out of Almería —as nicely as can be!

It was a windless day, so after motoring less than two hours from Las Roquetas, we anchored by late morning in the port of Almería exactly where Rob and Karen of Dreamtime anchored a couple of years ago. We showered, took a leisurely lunch, inflated the small tender, and rowed to the beach at around 3:30pm –but decided the homeless population was too numerous in the park for an evening return in the dark, so we rowed to the Club de Mar where they were absolutely welcoming for us to leave the dinghy “anywhere it won’t bother”.

To our surprise, as we walked towards the historic center, we saw a 50ft Guardia Civil boat going around Peregrinus and blowing its horn. We approached the waterfront park to hail them from shore but then saw the Guardias leaving. Since we did not get towed immediately and, so far, the Spanish cops have been incredibly relaxed, we decided to take it easy and leisurely visited the Alcazaba, which is the large fortress-palace complex begun in 955 by the first Caliph. The Christians finally took fortress and city in 1489. We then walked back to the Cathedral, whose beautiful main portal evoques the one of the Málaga Cathedral, but in 3/4ths scale, did some window shopping, quickly raided a large supermarket, and walked back to the Club.

We rowed to Peregrinus in the twilight, but just as we were disembarking the dinghy, we got a huge spotlight aimed at us… the Guardias had sneaked from behind! Two were at the front of their vessel, turned off the spotlight, and so we held a conversation from the back steps of Peregrinus: where is our flag from, surprise that we speak Spanish, what’s our citizenship, and where did we come from and are going to. Next we were informed we couldn’t anchor there, to which we reacted most surprised. They went on to explain that in ports “of State interest” one must contact the port authorities for permission to anchor, which will be summarily denied, they said. How’s that for a tip? And so we chatted for a while: these were two very nice fellows. They finally confessed, almost apologetically, that the Guardia itself has no problem with the likes of us but that some port directors just have “mala leche” (i.e., they’re just mean). Evidently, bureaucrats will be bureaucrats of their petty kingdoms, everywhere.

So we took it in stride and re-anchored a couple of miles down the beach. Tomorrow we plan on crossing the cape of La Gata.

The tiny white mast in the very center of the picture is Peregrinus at anchor, as seen from the Alcazaba. iPhone 6 Plus.