Tuesday 22^nd April – Barbate - Gibraltar

36:08.966N 5:21.314W

Today we had a good weather forecast and so we set sail (or rather motor sail) at lunchtime to catch the afternoon tide for Gibraltar. 

We motor-sailed as the westerly wind was behind us and we wanted to get there by 7pm so that we did not miss the marina guys who were going to be there to help us with the new stern to parking manoeuvre;  the marinas here are Mediterranean style – bow or stern to with a lazy line; no fingers to moor against.

The Straits of Gibraltar are renowned for being difficult at times so we chose a calm day for the journey, with a fair westerly wind and clear skies so we could enjoy the view.  

As we passed around Tarifa, the most southerly city of mainland Europe, and which boasts winds in excess of 30 knots for 300 out of 365 days of the year, we were pleased that we had chosen one of the 65 quiet days as the spring tide and residual swell meant there were races off the point even in this quiet time. 

As we sailed along the Strait and rounded into Gibraltar Bay, the wind became Force 5 from its benign Force 3-4 and gave us a great blast through the Bay to the marina allowing us to sail - with 3 knots of tide we were travelling at 9 knots much of the way.

The passage was wonderful; with sun and clear skies we had great views of Africa across the Strait.  The Strait is very busy with large shipping – it seemed busier than the English Channel but, as we were not crossing the shipping lanes but taking the inside track, we didn’t need to worry about the large vessels passing along on the tide.  It was weird as they were taking the tide out of the Med in the middle of the Strait and we were taking the tide into the Med at the edge, both at the same time – it’s the way the tide works.

Once we were moored up, after spending ages adjusting the lines to make sure we were nowhere near the unforgiving concrete pontoon, we were able to say hello to Wandering Dragon, who have been here for a couple of weeks, and Blue Elephant, who arrived a few days ago.

The marina has a great view of the north end of the Rock and is right beside the runway of the airport – affording great views of the planes landing and taking off (fortunately there are not many flights).

At this time I cannot get on or off the boat without a lot of help as we need to stay well away from the pontoon (all the boats are about a metre away) to prevent us hitting it with tide and swell and we don’t have a good method of getting ashore yet – our job is to solve this over the next few days.  However there are a lot of ideas around the marina for us to look at…