Friday the 30th September will be a date to remember. We set off from Rota around 10.30, armed with a weather forecast which promised light to moderate breezes, starting with a fetch on port tack and slowly freeing as the day went on, then a short beat after Cape Trafalgar, to our destination for the evening...Barbate.

None of this came true, after about midday!  By then we had left Cadiz behind and were fully close hauled, and beating into some interesting lumps of water. Cape Trafalgar does this to you...the overalls at Portland are little ripples by comparison. And the moderate breezes became 27 knots, so all the waves had whitecaps on them!

Still, after a jolly good soaking, we made it round, and slid into Barbate after a passage of just over 6 hours. Reverie were sailing with us and Marilyn apparently exclaimed that they were supposed to be living the dream, not the nightmare!  For me, this was "type 2 fun".... not much fun while it happened, but good to look back on and place in the bank of sailing experience.  On more than one occasion, I thought we were going to be slapped so hard by the sea, that we would be knocked down, but that didn't happen, and Persephone emerged unscathed.  Though we could have prepared better for sea...stuff fell about inside, and we needed a good sort out on arrival. It is perhaps especially noteworthy, for all the Sigma 38 watchers out there, that the bilges were completely bone dry even after the pounding....

Barbate is not very interesting. Industrial fishing port, with a marina tacked on the end.

So we headed out on October 1, and motored to Tarifa, where your author is now anchored.

This must be one of, if not the, southernmost places in Europe. To our right, we can see the mountains of Morocco, and if I'm not mistaken, that's Africa, right?

Tarifa is a kite surfing "Mecca" if that's not too much of a contradiction in terms. The aficionados of the sport come here because it's windy.  I guess it was yesterday, but this evening, it's not. As the sun sinks down in the western sky, here we sit, rocking gently at anchor, in crystal clear water, about 5 metres deep, sipping our sangrias. Perhaps the dream has returned, banishing yesterday's "battle" after all.

Karen is preparing dinner...melon and cerrano ham followed by a chicken surprise.  Perhaps I'll tell you what the surprise was, next time.

Off to Algeciras tomorrow, and thence to Gib...