During this week, we’ve had a mechanic from the marina over to look at the water, we got in one of the engine rooms during our sailing trip to Mar Menor last weekend. It turned out that the saltwater-pump for cooling the engine was leaking. We have to get the saltwater pumps for both engines replaced with new ones. Another expense to our shrinking budget. In addition the exhaust pipes for the engines also have cracks and need to be changed as well. Once again we are waiting for the mechanic and spareparts before we can go out sailing. 

Good news is that the mechanic have time for us now, and he is helping us replace the old instruments with the new stuff, we have purchased. He has already been up the mast and changed the radar already. Actually Martin was up there as well, but couldn’t get the wire off the radardome and I convinced him to come down and don’t try anything risky. After he had crawled down, he was disappointed and wished he hadn’t listened to me.

Now we have been in Spain for two months and our life at the moment is very different from the well-known life in Denmark with schools, offices, playing badminton with kids in our spare time and sitting in the sofa all-together eating snacks while watching “Alone”.

The marina is kind of like our new neighborhood. We recognize all the marineras. It’s actually quite peaceful with video surveillance and control every time you come in and out. It seems safe.

There are some fish that jump out of the water once in a while. We have wondered if it is a hunting technique. Then one day, Martin saw a real life hunt situation with a large fish luring a shoal of smaller fish to the surface. One of the small fish got eaten right before his eyes.

Lately we’ve been having visits of jellyfish, not the dangerous kind, but the ones with the little tentacles that you can easily swim with. Apparently they come from the Mar Menor, which has warmer water than the rest of the Mediterranean. Now that the waters of the Mediterranean have warmed up, the jellyfish have started to spread out in the sea.

There are quite a few cruise ships that dock next to the marina. They party with very loud music and the rest of us can only hear the bass. One of the Tui ships had a climbing wall. The sight of it tore open one of Elliott’s childhood traumas from when we were on a mediterranian cruise with Martin’s sister Laura’s family. Elliott was 5, just 3 days from being 6, and the age limit on the climbing wall was 6. We tried to convince the guide to allow it anyway, but the guide was a stickler for the rules, and Elliott wasn’t allowed to try. It ended in crying and pure unhappiness while the older kids were up on the climbing wall and Elliott had to stay down and miss out on all the happiness that was at the top of the climbing wall.

Apart from the cruise ships, the marina is also a military base and arsenal of the Spanish navy. It is one of the oldest naval bases in Spain, having been created in the 18th century. The port was first founded in the 2nd century BC and has ever since played an important role in Cartagenas history due to its strategic placement in the mediterranian sea.

From our berth we have a perfect view of the military ships and in a way the military’s presence has also affected our everyday-life. A couple of days after our arrival to Spain, we bought a brand new drone to make awesome footage to put up on this blog. Due to military restrictions, you are not allowed to fly a drone in a 5 km perimeter of the military base. Well, we just have to wait to the next marina.

Also from our berth we can see the industrial port with container-terminal with containers being shipped on and off very large ships.

Behind the shipyard, where we spent 15 days while our boat was getting fixed, there’s a quite large fishing harbour with fishing boats coming in and out everyday with a fishmarket for fishmongers, restaurants and even the supermarket-chain Spar. Living in our uplifted boat in the shipyard, we were not really keen of the smell of fish from the market. At evening time when the fisherboats came back to dock, they docked right next to us with a very impressive docking technique where the boat coming in from sea tied itself up to a docked boat. Then the docked boat was de-attached from the dock. And burning a lot of gas, the incoming boat turned 180 degrees with the other boat attached on the side, resulting in the two boats switching places, so now the incoming boat could be attached to the dock. I guess it has to do something with which boat comes out first in the morning.