Leaving Gibraltar
23rd September
We are up bright and early this morning, to make sure that we have time to get a last shower before we go. Nice hot showers will not be available for the next few days, better make the most of it, wet wipes will have to do the job after today.
We need to fill up the fuel tank before we leave for our 720 nm crossing. The wind forecast is predicting up to 25kn wind consistently, and in the right direction for a change (on the beam to start with, following us after we head south), for the next few days on the way to the Canaries. We should not need to use the engine that much but just to be on the safe side, we will fill the tank and our 3 brand new jerrycans. We had a long wait at the fuel pontoon and the pump attendant informed us that filling up jerrycans was actually forbidden (duties issues) but he was just going to keep himself busy and ignore us whilst we were doing the illegal deed. Fortunately, the customs officers in their brand spanky new boat parked 100 m away also chose to do the same… unless they did not see us for real.
Whilst we were refuelling, I was keeping an eye on the counter, when I was called over by a very young man on the other side of the petrol station wall. All I could see was his face fitting perfectly in a square hole in the wall, a pair of bright blue eyes and a huge smile… were we going to the Canaries on our boat and would we take him and his dog with us, was all he wanted to know. Curious, I asked where he was from; a vague East Europe was all I got, although his accent had already told me as much. My next question was received by an even bigger smile, had he sailed before; no, nor him or his dog had been on a sailing boat before but he was strong and a quick learner and was ready to work really hard for his passage… I had visions of both of them being seasick on board as soon as we set off… which as Ian mentioned would have been the least of our problem. Having turned him away, we were preparing to slip the lines, when the shop attendant came running to us saying that there was a young man and his dog in the shop who told him that we were taking him on our boat, was that correct? He nodded knowingly when we confirmed that was not the case; I am guessing that this happened on a regular basis in a marina petrol station in Gibraltar. Full mark to this young lad for pluck…wonder if his strategy will ever work.
We are a bit late for the tide, but only by an hour or so and we decide to go for it. There are about 4 or 5 sailing boats going in the right direction. Weaving our way around the parked and moving tankers, we are out of the bay into the Strait itself. The bay is enormous and there are tankers littering all of it. In the distance, Morocco side are the traffic lanes, at a safe distance. At its narrower point, the strait of Gibraltar is 7 miles, and although this is not much for a tanker to manoeuvre at the speed they go, it is plenty room for us not to get in their way. The traffic is uninterrupted all day from left to right and right to left. All sorts of vessels, all shapes and sizes. I must say that the traffic lanes in the English Channel now seem very quiet in comparison and the type of boats encountered is definitely not as diverse. Crossing this lot later today is going to be fun… The rock of Gibraltar can be seen for miles before it finally disappear behind a jutting headland. That is it the Mediterranean is behind us.
We have to motor sail all day, there is not much wind. We do have company though, a 32 foot left the fuel pontoon just behind us and it is obviously going down the strait. He has opted to stay close to the shore and it does seem to be paying off as he soon become a far away white dot, guess current inshore if far stronger. Still we soon catch him up, by following in his footsteps.
The scenery is fantastic, on the right Spain and hills are not so high and not so steep, on the Moroccan side, they have jagged mountains, shrouded in haze. Amazing difference given it is so close. You can’t help thinking of all the people who have come across here in the past, famous or not…they all must have had the same kind of trepidation, leaving behind the relative safety of the Mediterranean sea with all its safe havens to confront the ocean , not necessarily knowing what they would discover on the way. You can almost understand why people were frightened to pass the Pillars of Hercules, the end of the known ancient world. Sailor who crossed this landmark must have been fearless, not taking any notice of the wide held belief that you could fall off the edge of the world. You can definitely feel that you are now on an ocean; the waves are different, higher but also wider and with more of a roll in them, far cry from the English Channel. For the moment they are on our beam, so not particularly comfortable. We will turn south soon, rounding up Morocco and the waves will then be following us, this will give another feel to it, especially as we will be able to shut the engine off and go under sail proper, with the right amount of wind, a nice 20 knots, going in the right direction.
We cross the lanes as the evening closes in, the traffic is still heavy in both directions, conveyor belt like, and we are close to the coast of Morocco. The most remarkable convoy is in the shipping lane going east; it took us a while to work out that 2 huge pilot boats, much bigger than your average pilot, are towing a rig of some description. Inching closer, it does look like an oil rig, 4 legs; tall tower perched on a platform, fascinating sight. We are amazed at the speed this is travelling at and thank our stars that we saw it in day light. Not sure the navigation lights showing at night would have given us any clues to what we were actually seeing. Wonder where this is going, is there any oil field in the Mediterranean? Will need to find out.
Once the traffic lanes are crossed, we are able to switch off the engine and go under sail. Obviously, this is when the instruments pack up, no wind, no speed, no electronic compass…back to the good old days, wind vane up the mast and steering wheel compass. Ian spent a bit of time trying to fix it but we decided that he would be better off going to sleep. We have the essential, if the instruments haven’t come back to life by morning, he can have a proper look in day time. There are a lot of vessels around all night, guess the approaches to the strait of Gibraltar are just as busy as the strait itself. Mr X is doing well; our speed over ground is over 7 knots at times and average 6. There is loads of fluorescence in our wake and plenty of shooting stars And suddenly, for no reason at all the instruments are back… go figure!
We settle into our shift pattern. I am on watch from 8pm till midnight (my disco time, I usually play cheerful music I can sing and dance to). Ian takes over then and gets me up at 4am for my second stint in the dark, very dark, there is no moon for the whole trip, till 8am. We have breakfast, watch the sunrise which is quite late around here (8.15-8.30) and I might grab a few hours of sleep. Loosing track of time though, it feels like I get twice as many days in 24 hours, don’t seem to be able to sleep much during the day, although I do try snoozetting in the sunshine. Ian is much better at catching sleep at any opportunity.
The second day is nice and sunny with nice wind. The traffic is thinning down and we see very few vessels during the day. We even do some crosswords in the afternoon. The beginning of the night is quiet; I have a sailing boat stern light ahead of me which is quite reassuring. He is obviously following the same course and it does help with the concentration, although the autopilot is on. We did have a bit of a fret when loads of little lights appeared close to the surface of the sea. The disconcerting thing was the colours; there was white, orange, yellow and red small flashing lights and no vessels around. We figured that it could only be nets or fishing pots and gave them a wide birth. Not sure if I mentioned it before but I am a heavy sleeper, which is a blessing as the noise down below when the wind is up and the waves are crashing is just maddening; imagine sleeping in a washing machine, complete with motion and water sound effects, and that is without mentioning the din of all the moving things down below and on deck. On the other hand sleeping too soundly is not really good when there are only 2 of you on board. The wind got up during Ian’s watch and he tried to put a reef on, on his own, without waking me up. He was struggling for a while before a bigger crash than usual woke me up and I came up to give him a hand. Lesson learned, from now on we either reef down for the night or we will wake the other before we do anything. Common sense but I do have a gung ho bloke who likes to do it by himself and not disturb my beauty sleep! We ended up dropping the main and carried on with just a little genoa out, still making 5 to 6 knots… who needs a main when the wind is behind? Brilliant, less to worry about.
The wind and the waves have definitely increased and by the time I get up for my second watch it is not pitch black anymore, Although there is still no moon, light is catching on the crest of the waves and the fluorescent are forming intricate lace patterns on them. It is just beautiful, twinkling of the stars above and white lace hedged with diamonds all around us. When the waves hit the boat the sparkling of diamonds shattering across the deck, it is quite spectacular and quite magical. Magical that is until a rogue wave fills the cockpit and the diamonds are around my feet…did not like this much. Moonshadow, our previous boat, was very close to the water and the cockpit was often flooded, we were used to it. Mr X is a dry boat, much higher on the water and the sudden realisation that the waves were probably much higher than I thought they were did freak me out.
Daybreak finds us inside one of those Japanese sea paintings, all breaking curly waves surrounding us. It is still quite beautiful but also scarier as the perspectives in daylight are restored and you can see how big the sea following us is. Making breakfast is a challenge, and coffee is spilt despite me holding on fast onto it!
The wind pretty much does not abate for the next 2 days, we got used to it, although making dinner is a circus act, catching pots and pans skidding across the work surface and juggling with the vegetables and the chopping board. What fun! No more reading or crosswords in the sun though, it is full oillies, life jackets and we are strapped up. We spotted some sails appearing and disappearing between the waves. They took all day to overtake us, we then followed them for most of these 2 days, obviously trying to catch them up, not quite managing it. Again, it was nice to have point of reference during the days and the nights. Knowing that we were not alone on this rollercoaster and that other people were going through the same as we were made it better somehow. We did get to talk to one of them, Ian got a weather forecast which was predicting higher winds and he wanted to check if they had the same outlook. Corsa did not have any weather information but had issues with their batteries not charging. Ian ended up giving some advice over the VHF, which tickled me. There he is again, coming to the rescue of a young maiden!
Mr X is going very well considering how heavy we are, we average around 140 miles per 24 hours, still only with the genoa out and even then not all of it. We even broke our record with 8.6 knots!
We saw some dolphins briefly, they were much bigger than the one we saw in the med iterranean, but they did not seem as curious. They ignored us and carried on although who can blame them, with the waves as they were, no wonder they were not up for play. I cannot imagine the strength needed to swim with or without flippers in this boiling cauldron of foam.
Night encounter of another of these oil rigs being towed; as predicted, the navigation lights we were seeing did not match anything that made any sense, lit up like a Christmas tree, with no recognisable pattern except for a tall tower and 4 lights below it , where the legs were and it was only because we had seen one in the day light that we could visualise and recognise it for what it was. Must be plenty of oil fields around.
Only one night to go, 70 miles….the sky is overcast, no moon, no stars, it feels very lonely, I turn up the volume of the stereo, it does help. The waves have flattened and the wind, still at our back, has come down a bit. We have not seen any vessel for a day and we are now looking forward to get to shore, we can almost smell it… Ian has tried every single berth to find the most comfortable. He favours the port side in the saloon; wedged between the dinghy and the back of the seat, buried under a mountain of cushions (he had all 6 of them over his head at some stage. I favour the starboard berth in the saloon, but thought that I should really try the forepeak (our usual sleeping place) as with a full crew, it is where I will be sleeping during the Atlantic crossing. Well, that was the best 4 hours sleep ever…all you can hear is the waves washing over the hull, just like being returned to the womb. Plenty room to spread around doing my starfish impression as Ian calls it. Whished I’d slept there since we left Gibraltar.
Daybreak is bleak, no sun, low grey clouds, not very nice although seeing a dark spot on the horizon which is obviously Gran Canarias, cheers us up. It takes a while to reach the harbour entrance and the traffic is getting heavier, it looks like a busy port both for passengers with loads of fast ferries and plenty other type of vessels. The waves are still tall and we have to negotiate our entrance carefully, it s littered with parked tankers. We finally tie up the welcome pontoon in the middle of the afternoon. We are 4 days ahead of schedule… they are not expecting us and will find us a permanent berth tomorrow… Shame, we could have stopped off in Lanzarotte for a few days….
Still we have done it… we would celebrate if we weren’t so tired!