“Senor, the official hour, she is not yet here” said a very helpful Spaniard, in a mix of broken English and Spanish, as he noticed me waiting for the Officina of the Marina to open.
“Oh,” I said a little befuddled from lack of sleep. I tried to think what this information meant but it was 10.00am on an October Sunday morning and I had enjoyed precisely 2 hours 45 minutes of sleep since our boisterous overnight sail from Almerimar. We had covered 120 miles or so in 15 ½ hours averaging 7.5 knots under jib alone .
It had been an exhilarating sail but very tiring, as, with the wind behind us, the boat had rolled horribly from side to side through an arc of 30 degrees for the whole voyage. The winds had remained constantly between 20-25 mph providing more than enough power and eventually building waves of around 2-2 ½ metres in height. These rolled under us at a slight angle and were the cause of the horrible rolling.
We were returning to Bajadilla Marina in Marbella to have a stainless steel gantry fitted to the stern of the boat which we had ordered earlier in the year. The gantry was to hold our solar panels and wind generator. We had wanted to arrive in daylight and had based our departure time of 2:00pm the day before on a planned 20 hour journey that would enable us to arrive at Bajadilla mid to late morning. They had asked us to phone the day before to confirm they had a berth as we were arriving 3 days before our previously made reservation began. Unfortunately we had “forgotten” to make the call in the hurly burly of preparing for departure. The truth of the matter really being that we had a small “weather window” of easterly winds before these turned into a full force 8 gale gusting force 9, and changed to westerly’s on Sunday evening and we were damned if we were going to let a little thing like a full marina stop us.
But I digress, as previously mentioned we arrived at 7.00am in the pitch black and “footled” around the marina for a bit. (For those who don’t sail footling is just the activity of keeping the boat in roughly the same place whilst you get on with other stuff such as getting fenders rigged and mooring warps ready. It is also very handy to give thinking or panicking time when you don‘t know what you are going to do next….). After a few minutes footling the security guard previously attracted by our arrival got bored and wandered off. Our plan had been to tie up alongside the waiting quay and try for a berth when the office opened, however someone had beaten us to it. A quick check of the marina revealed only one berth big enough to take us, so seizing our opportunity, in we went. I was a bit concerned that the berth actually had carpet on the adjacent quayside which certainly suggested we had hijacked someone else’s berth.
However needs must when the devil drives and we were knackered and needed some sleep. So we moored had a quick cuppa and turned in. I set the alarm for 10.00am when I knew the Officina opened and planned to negotiate then.
Which is how I came to be waiting outside the office in such a befuddled state at 10 sharp on a bright and sunny Sunday morning. I mulled over my new Spanish acquaintance’s statement. What on earth did he mean by the official hour? I concluded that he meant that the office hours of this municipal marina had changed and that was why the official hour had changed.
“So the opening hours of the Officina have changed” I said.
“No Senor”said my Spaniard, who began to bang his head with the palm of his hand in frustration at my stupidity. “The government has changed the time.” and he began to make gestures showing the fingers of his watch rotating round the dial for 24 hours.
“Oh the Officina doesn’t open on a Sunday any more?” I guessed.
This prompted more pantomime watch winding and head banging and so clearly was not the right guess. Realising he had a challenge on his hands he went through the whole pantomime again but very, very slowly. At the end of this charade I looked at him dumbly bereft of ideas, and he, now equally bereft of any new gestures, asked me to wait whilst he went to talk to his wife in the nearby shower block.
Two minutes later he was back “Senor” he said, with renewed confidence and words supplied by his spouse. “The official hour is not here yet because last night the government changed the clocks back one hour to wintertime”
“Clang! The penny dropped…all was now clear. I thanked my new friend profusely for his explanation of why the office wasn’t open and silently cursed my mistake which had cost me an hour in bed.
He wandered off wreathed in smiles of satisfaction having done his good turn for the day by helping a very stupid Englishman; and as for me….well I had another 20 minutes to kill before the Officina opened
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