Monday - 20 August 2018

Chipiona is a pleasant holiday town, at the mouth of the Rio Guadalquivir, the river which winds it’s way 55 miles inland to Seville. The holiday-makers seemed to us to all be Spanish. We didn’t hear any other languages spoken. We found it a delightful place. There are several golden sandy beaches, all spotlessly clean. Along the sea front in the centre of the town is a paved promenade, which we ran along, past the Moorish style church and Punta del Perro lighthouse. The latter was built of stone in 1867 and is also clean; no sign of air pollution here. The main street was buzzing with activity and, once past the tourist shops, we found the municipal market, selling meat, fish, fruit and vegetables, and a bakery. Here the residential buildings are low rise, four stories at most, quite different to other places we have been recently.

After siesta time and it was starting to cool down a bit,Steve went up the mast to retrieve the spinnaker halliard, which had flown loose and neatly wrapped itself around the backstay yesterday. While we preparing the lines to hoist him up in the bosun's chair, a Portuguese from a neighbouring boat came over to offer his help, for which I was mighty relieved. When we hoist somebody up the mast, we always use two ropes, for safety. getting them up is quite straightforward as we have electrically powered winches, but it is helpful to have one person for each line for coming down again. It all went very smoothly and the spinnaker line is back where it should be.

The marina is on the edge of the town. We noticed the two restaurants overlooking the marina were very popular at lunchtime so we decided this was a good night to go out to eat, celebrating our first day back in Spain and the excitement the first mast ascent when we were without other crew. We knew it really, but we arrived too early. We have to get used to late eating now, as the usual opening time is 9pm. We walked the seafront to kill time and then, we were treated to three courses of seafood. The owner, came to explain what was on offer, all fish, as he spoke the best English, we suspected. We wondered whether we were not given menus to look at because it was obvious we don’t speak Spanish, but we later saw that nobody was given a menu. The waiters tell you what fish has come straight in from the boats today. We started with king prawns (or perhaps one would call them langoustines), followed by tiny clams, followed by sole. The clams were very sweet and particularly delicious.

We retired replete, ready for a day at sea tomorrow.

Distance covered today	0	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	1350	nautical miles
Distance covered 2018	2070	nautical miles
Tricia (and Steve)