36:08.940N 5:21.304W

Today we were once again up bright and early this time to sail to Gibraltar. We had planned the passage as well as checking and double checking (if not triple checking) the weather. The cats knew we were on the move again and took up their positions early. Once under way we negotiated the tuna nets just outside the harbour entrance and set off towards the straights of Gibraltar. We could soon see the coast of Africa. It was quite a feeling to be sailing past two continents.

We had a lovely sail, at one point the wind picked up a bit so we put a reef in the sail (made the sail smaller for those non boaty people). Our journey did take us past a couple of Races (rough water) but today they weren’t too bad as the wind was in the right direction. We were also more psychologically prepared for turbulent waters this time!

Yoyo spent nearly all of the sail up on deck with us. Koshka as usual spent the day asleep.

As we neared Gibraltar we had to keep a close eye open for other traffic. High speed ferries are the worst, they appear very quickly and once they have passed (even thought they don’t get at all close) they leave a large wake.

We arrived in Gibraltar early evening and managed to moor up “Mediterranean” style without too much trouble (although thankfully with help from the marina staff). The cats have now used their passports properly as Gibraltar is not in the EU. They have also “survived” the experience of a plane landing and taking off from the runway almost next to us (it really wasn’t too bad at all and there are not many planes).

Tomorrow we will go and explore some of the rock.

We set sail from Barbate on a perfect day…

…and sailed along the Gibraltar Straights with two continents in view; Europe on the

 left (not shown) and Africa (see picture) on the right….

…and finally Gibraltar rock came into view.