Sancti-Petri
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Thu 9 Sep 2010 17:08
Once again as the harbour is in a small lagoon the entrance was quite narrow and had very shallow parts including a sandbank. It will be somewhere we will need to leave on a rising tide to ensure we have enough depth. As it was still fairly breezy when we anchored, and it took two or three attempts to get the anchor set we decided to stay on board this evening and make sure everything was ok.
The following morning the wind had dropped altogether and the weather was calm and sunny so after a very lazy morning we set off in the dinghy to see what, if anything, there was in the town. The book says that there is nothing at all and describes the town as a 'ghost town' but with a small resort area bringing people from Cadiz to the beaches. All there is here is a small beach bar and a couple of fish restaurants. The town was previously a fishing village, and there is still a decent sized fishing fleet, but it has long been deserted as a place to live. Strangely there seems to be no obvious reason why, and there has certainly been some money spent creating a small marina and wooden boardwalks around the place. The guidebook gives no indication as to why the place is now deserted, but we were here on a spring tide and the water was about street level at high tide so maybe flooding.....?? When we arrived back at our dinghy the gate to the floating pontoon was almost underwater and we had to walk through the gate and up the hill to the jetty.
On our second night the wind blew up again and unfortunately our anchor dragged and we were woken up by the anchor alarm at 5.30am to find that were going aground! We were sitting on the mud with no depth of water at all. The wind was reaching speeds of up to 41knots - gale force 9. Plan A was to leave on this afternoon's high tide providing the wind dropped a bit but unfortunately it didn't. By this time we had reset the anchor again as it was dragging in the mud. We had to stay onboard all day as even launching the dinghy was impossible, also there really wasn't anywhere to go anyway! That night we had to take turns on anchor watch - two hours on and two off and we planned to set off on the morning tide as soon as it was light, about 7.30am, if everything is more settled.