Well we arrived in Cartagena on Friday afternoon and by that evening it was blowing about 50kts across our deck in the marina.

There is a settled pattern now of high winds and seas from the west which makes a next leg to Gibraltar at best very uncomfortable/miserable at worst impossible. The forecasts are not encouraging and there is no hope of change for the next 5 days or so.

Rather than sit around feeling sorry for ourselves we have decided to ‘go sailing’ so we are off for a brisk sail up to Alicante which is a little further up the coast. We will see how the forecasts change over the next few days but sadly the strongest liklihood is that we will continue our pleasant sailing and not be able to do our transatlantic this time.

I shall be very despondent if that turns out to be the case but with the weather the way it is at the moment dominated by low pressure over the Iberian peninsular we dont have mujch in the way of a sensible option – but who knows !

More anon