Summer cruise, Part 2. The knife is sharp, the knife cuts.

A roughed up rowing boat...

and a modern tuna fishing boat in l'Amettla de Mar

So I spent the afternoon making short tacks down the coast. Nosing into every cove and sailing excitingly close in under the cliffs, I stared into the mesmerisingly clear water judging when to tack by the depth. I didn’t switch the GPS on as this only has the effect of making me check our speed every few minutes. Gadgets turn us into nerds.

By the end of the afternoon I’d reached l’Ampolla and swung east to the low lying arm of the river Ebro delta; El punta del Fangar. Banks of fine grey brown sand shifting about on the winds and currents, low scrub and driftwood, gulls, terns and egrets, acres of solitude.

I ran the boat aground and took a line ashore to a handy concrete stub and then waded astern with the anchor. This would be a fine place to spend the night providing the Mestral wind didn’t blow. The beach was white with gulls and their mess and I strolled a round with a cup of tea wondering if I should get the boat up and out of the water for a safer night. But the beach looked like it was often under water, probably when the North Westerly wind blew and waves washed over it. Finally I made a phone call, a drop in temperature and northerlies were forecast. I could be stuck on a lee shore with a nasty sea washing over it.

On the last of the wind I sailed back to Port l’Estany anchoring just as the sun dropped behind the hills. I was feeling festive after a great day’s sailing and opened some wine and cooked up a little feast.

It was while I was putting up the tent, cutting a cable tie off a pole, that I found myself thinking, ‘This is not a seaman like way to be using the boat knife.’ And the next minute, blood flowed. Only a short cut to the end of that useful middle finger but deep enough to need a long while to stop bleeding, I knew that in one stupid moment I’d ruined the next day’s sailing. I bedded down still sucking my finger determined that if I couldn’t sail tomorrow then at least I’d go and buy some minimal first aid.

The Mestral came on strong in the night and I fought the tent into submission and hoisted the mizzen to stop us slewing all over, my finger opening up with an eager red flow. Shredded cloud streaked across a waning moon and when the morning came it was low, grey and windy. Just as well I’d moved off that beach the evening before. I walked into town to find a pharmacy.

L’Ametlla de Mar is an ugly, impenetrable town. For all its favoured geographical position, its architecture and planning all speak of a hard, subsistence existence by the sea. On this dull Friday morning the town was full of blank faced French tourists peering into the port waters and wondering how they’d ended up somewhere so ugly and impenetrable.

The town’s scant charms lie in its history and anybody with a grain of salty cred will refer to the place not as l’Ametlla de Mar, Almond on Sea, but as ‘La Cala’, which is part of the town’s original name; La Cala de l’Amtella, The Cove of the Almond, or Almond Cove. Over a couple of centuries the town grew up around the protected cove or cala to become an important fishing port and the seat of Catalan nautical wisdom.

I bought some rudimentary first aid, repaired my finger on a bench and then succumbed to the gravitational pull exerted over me by the restaurant ‘El Pescador’ The Fisherman. Full of paella and calamari I walked back to the boat. She looked so lovely sitting there and the wind was so emphatic that I decided to go for a sail. Despite a large, forbidding cloud that lurked just offshore.