El Estartit

Sailed over to this modest little town called El Estartit from Cala Canyelles. Had following seas and a very light breeze between Force 1 and 2, so did a giant gentle spinnaker run. 

Ended up running through a massive, 40+ person race of 18-foot catamarans with dolphins on their sails. Not sure what they were but, in my effort to avoid getting entangled in their race, ended up going way offshore to round their marks. 

Then the wind died down even further, so I took out my new fishing gear and trailed some weird looking lure that Juan, the salesman in Mallorca, practically guaranteed would catch tuna ("segurido! segurido!" he said, and gave me his number to call if it failed to work). It's essentially dressed up to accentuate the features that not-too-bright animals might find attractive, such as an enormous eye, a few skimpy feathers around the chest, and a giant hook around where the crotch would be. Its grotesque over-exaggeration of a few key features, in a desperate attempt to appeal to fish, reminds me of the women I ran into in the club district in Barcelona with their eye makeup and skimpy outfits -- I bet if I blew up Juan's lure to 5'6", put on some heels on the hooks, and trolled it through the Port Olympique club district at 3am, I'd catch some guys wearing way too much hair gel. Anyhow, I trolled it for two hours, and I got nothing. Frankly, the lure looks grotesque. If I were a fish, I would not bite. But Juan claims it's way better than the Rapala lures that most other people use. I'll give it another go but if it fails to catch something really big -- given the amount of energy Juan put into selling this lure, it needs to be really really big at this point, as in Moby Dick big -- then I'll just go back to the trusty old Rapala, which has also been just as ineffective, but at least it looks kind of like a normal fish and I know I want to bite it myself.

Finally pulled into the little port town called El Estartit. I can't find much information about this town online, but it's clearly very old and has been through quite a few invasions and has weathered quite a few storms itself. The breakwater is pretty impressive and a testament to the kind of southerly storms these folks must face in the winter. It's a pretty place, and the B&B across the harbor had a vacancy on the top floor overlooking the harbor, so the accommodations were pretty nice overall.

View from the bed and breakfast.

Not a Spanish prison

Natural rockfall apparently took out a major part of the promenade this year

Even a boring port scene in Costa Brava is pretty