A real damper, grey low skies and you could see the rain clouds racing around us. By the evening it had more or less cleared up, just as well really as we needed to contend with the fishing boats and other large vessels what were plying the golf. It was just madness for a little while, the whole sea lit up by enormous white lights and flashing red which did not make any sense. The white lights turned out to be fishing boat fishing au lamparo, the little red we supposed were warnings for fishing nets. We had a few hours to recover from our heart palpitations until dawn when it all started again. This time they were all coming at us… all 15 of them from all directions…. at least we could see them clearly and we could avoid them, although some of them came quite close…we could wave at them!
By this time the wind had changed and for once we were actually sailing on the right course for most of the day and the evening, which was lovely. We ate the miles, right up to about 15 miles out of Valencia when the wind stopped and we had to motor again after dinner. Night had fallen and we could make out the string of light festooning the coast for miles. Those last few miles toward Valencia were excruciatingly slow. It seemed so close but it still took 3 hours to reach the port. On arrival at 3am, we had to go through the dreaded mooring astern…not much better than our previous effort, but the nice bear of a man who manned the marina was very helpful and put down our inadequacy to the fact that we had not slept for so long… how kind!
The discos were still pumping loud music when we arrived and we were surprised when they stopped at 4am…thought they would actually greet the sunrise with louder music still. Marina Juan Carlos.