Sunday September 13th

Apologies for the lack of recent blogging, from me anyway.  I could blame the lack of WiFi [or wiffy as it’s known here], but mainly it’s just not quite getting round to it. Too much sailing, sightseeing and the general stuff of life.

The last time I posted we were about to leave Gibraltar, which we did at dawn, as I was reluctant to cross the Bay of Gibraltar again in the dark, although there were still plenty of cargo ships to avoid. Early, so we could catch the tide as it turned to go west and also to arrive in Tangier before dark. We retraced our track, going west back out through the Straits of Gibraltar and past Tarifa, the town on the Spanish side of the Straits. We had hoped to have the wind with us, an easterly wind known here as a ‘levanter’, but we had a light westerly wind against us. Strangely the tides were not what they should have been and we ended up battling west against both wind and tide until we passed Tarifa, and some 4 or 5 miles after this we turned left and headed across the shipping lanes for Morocco. We by now had the wind on our starboard beam [ie on the right side of the boat] and had a great sail in force 4 to 5 winds all the way across to Tangier.

I had hoped to download some video that I shot during the crossing so that, from the comfort of your armchair at home, you could share the thrill of sailing with us across the Straits of Gibraltar without the risk of feeling in the slightest seasick. Unfortunately the wiffy connection is so poor here that I’ve been unable to download it. Hopefully later. So a few photos for now:

We are now in Mohammedia, a port about 150 miles south of Tangier, and will be leaving around midnight to continue south. I’ll try to get more up to date over the next few days.