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We have finally made it to Barcelona! Well a marina 12 miles south which we thought might be better than the city marina's. We left Torevieja last Saturday and we arrived last night (Friday), having covered 180 miles, the trip up was good barring one minor incident…We were motoring along in the night hoping for more wind, when I noticed the oil pressure gage was reading zero! We shut the engine down and I checked the oil level which seemed fine so we motored on under one engine while I consulted some reference books to see how serious a problem this was and what were the probable causes. The books suggested that it may be serious and the likely cause after ruling out checkable things was a broken bearing if it wasn't a faulty gage. As I don't know what an engine bearing is so I felt this was time to call a mechanic, or at least it would be when we arrived somewhere. We reached Puerto Oropesa de mar as planned and anchored off. Favourable winds were forecast so we decided to sail on the next day as entering one port with one engine couldn't be much different from entering another. Unfortunately the wind didn't materialise and our dwindling diesel supply encouraged us to put into Puerto de las Fuentes (we have stopped using our main tanks due to leaking problems and have ordered new ones which should arrive in January) Fortunately the lack of wind meant that parking wasn't complicated although it took some time to manoeuvre the boat in the tight space with only one engine. Leaving was harder…We found a mechanic who pronounced the engine well and traced the problem to a faulty connection! Hooray its not going to cost a fortune and take a long time! We were berthed stern too with concrete pontoons on both sides facing a sea wall 55 feet in front of the boat. This should have presented no great problem except that we had 15 knots of wind gusting to 28 blowing from astern blowing us towards the wall. Double Helix is light and has high topsides so the wind was going to blow us onto the wall with considerable speed. Lizzie went to pay while I started preparing the boat, the marinero offered to help when it was time to cast off ("you are leaving, you will need help") we warped the boat across to the port side pontoon to give us a better angle for the turn and ran a slip line from our mid ships cleat to the end of the starboard side pontoon which Liz shortened up as we blew forward for us to pivot on to prevent us being blown on to the wall. The marinero arrived and asked if we could wait a moment till another arrived before we departed, he clearly didn't fancy our chances! "good luck turning" he remarked as he threw the line aboard. Lizzie hurt her finger a bit when the pivot line loaded up, but we otherwise got away ok. Once out we put a reef in the mainsail and prepared for a fast passage only to find ourselves in a flat calm a mile off shore!We had some great downwind sailing the following day with between 15 and 20 knots of breeze. Lizzie clocked the highest speed at 11.9 knots! Her grin was from ear to ear. We arrived at Port Ginesta near Barcelona in the dark our 3rd night entry already! It is very dusty here as there is a cement factory up on the hill, and the marina is a bit like a ghost town. However there is a convenient and lovely beach and charges are not too high. Also the Australian family we met in the Mar Menor are here and the kids have had a great week playing. They are off back to Australia tomorrow and we'll try the bus to Barcelona before deciding if we'll try and get a berth in the city itself.
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