Position           36:08.98N 005:21.23W

Date                Thursday 14 October 2010    

Certain things always seem to happen in the early hours of the morning; babies are born (so the mate tells me), the army, in my day anyway, appeared to have to rush around so that they could then spend hours of good sleep time waiting for something to happen and sailors have to get up to catch the tide.

So it was; we had a 04:30 reveille and a 05:00 departure to catch the tide through the Straits of Gibraltar.  We are talking Spanish time here which is GMT (UTC) + 2 so first light does not occur until about 08:00. There may have been no wind but we did have up to 3 knots of tide and current combined with us through the Straits.

The early start did mean that we had a dramatic first sight of the rock with the dawn:

The Rock is just appearing around the headland, Europa Point is under the genoa sheet and in the second photograph “the whole is exposed”

The Bay of Gibraltar was like the proverbial millpond and full of interest being very busy with anchored ships and fuel lighters set off by the Rock itself

We were alongside the fuel dock by 10:00 where the mate did a remarkable impression of a gnome sitting on a toadstool, all is missing is the fishing rod!

More on Gibraltar next time.