30) Gibraltar

Gibraltar 36° 09N 5°21’W

We went provisioning yesterday at Safeway.  These are a couple things that we did not buy:

And, here’s something we did buy:

 

The canvas people still hadn’t come back with the dodger.  John said he’s buying and I said I’m a-goin’ with you!

Had our last beer in Gibraltar last night and it turned into two.   Mmm, Green King IPA.  Not like IPA in the U.S., though: a bit light on the flavor.  But, who’s counting. 

We left Gibraltar at 10:07am this morning and of course the sun was shining.  All of us were ready and excited to go.  We were definitely tired of the cold Med weather and were looking forward to heading south.  I think the jets finally got to us.  I know they and all the other noises of construction and city life got to me.

We managed to get out of the slip with ease and underway.  Surprisingly, the bay was lumpy and there was some wind but I managed to make a meal of potatoes-ham-eggs-cheddar cheese for breakfast.  When we got to the straights and the shipping lanes the wind had increased to 30 knots abaft and abeam.  There were following seas of about four to six feet.

There was a lot of commercial traffic in the shipping lanes and we did what we had to in order to avoid them.  Several sailboats were on there way west, also.  The tricky part is crossing the lanes and that is what we needed to do.  Basically, we were on the north side of the lanes and were heading south.  We watched traffic at this time very carefully and since it was daytime it seemed easier.  We tried to parallel them as long as possible but eventually had to enter the first lane.  No big deal until you spot that freighter on the horizon.  And, they come up behind you, too!  We made it to the center of the lanes and once again went parallel looking for a safe time to cross the next lane.  After we got thru them both and were on the outside of them all we had to do was keep an eye on them all the way to The Canaries!  The black line is the planned route.

We had been spit out of the Straights of Gibraltar and that night the winds reached 34 knots, which pushed us along at an astonishing 7+ knots!  We were moving!  We thought if that keeps up we would be there in 3 days!  This 24-hour run netted us 140+ plus miles.  This was a great start.

Technically, that is a watchin’-the-sunset going-to-sea grin.