Ibiza to Gibraltar

400 miles and at least 3 days at sea ahead of us.

We woke to a nice moderate breeze blowing in exactly the direction we wanted to head, just as forecast, perfect.

We had a leisurely breakfast upped anchor and headed off with full sail and made good progress, this lasted until early evening when the wind started to drop, we continued under sail until out speed dropped to around 2 knts and then the engine came on. 0300 the wind returned and full sail was set again, by Mark as Amanda snored happily below. We were well away from any shipping lanes and we passed a quiet night slowly slipping SW.

 Sunset at sea

 Get up its your watch !

During the next day we continued with very light winds but just enough to carry on under sail, although crossing the main shipping lane at a little over 4 miles and hour was interesting.

After passing Cabo Gata in the early hours daylight dawned along with very light winds. The forecast indicated stronger winds further offshore so we hoisted the spinnaker and proceeded southwards at a stately 2-3 knts, frustratingly slow but at least we were making progress…just! Eventually even this light breeze died away and we had the engine on for a couple of hours. Just as Mark had settled in bed the wind came up and it was all hands on deck to hoist sail and ensure we made the most of it.

We were quite surprised to find we had picked up about 2 knts of foul tide  even though we were still about 100 miles from the straights of Gibraltar, this slowed progress until the tide turned about 6 hours later when we picked up a knot of fair tide. Why is the tide always stronger when it is against you ????

As we approached Gib the tide again turned and the sea became pretty rough, but Amanda saw a whale, loads of flying fish and a large pod of dolphins which played on the bow wave for quite a while.

 The rock with a top hat cloud

Busy shipping in Gibraltar bay, This is a photo of our chart plotter showing us in black on the right with our track in green, all the grey triangles are other ships !!

We rounded Europa point at about 1800 and were safely anchored at La Linea just in time to have dinner in the cockpit watching the sunset.