We arrived at Cadiz on Saturday 11th July at about 12 noon after a pretty good night's sail which took about 22 hours. The winds here are still a bit unpredictable and during the night we seemed to have not enough wind or too much wind. When we first laid eyes on Cadiz we were not too impressed, there was large cranes everywhere, very large ships and ferries going backwards and forwards, but once in the marina things was not too bad. We spent a bit of time sightseeing in the town, which was ok we wasn't too impressed although Lord Byron declared Cadiz to be the most beautiful town he has ever seen, so its probably us not appreciating the finer points. One thing we are finding hard is that shops etc seem to always close when you need them. Here for instance, shops closed on Saturday afternoon and do not reopen until Monday morning. This has meant that for the last 10 days we have not seen a proper large supermarket and we have had to rely on our back up of reserved food, so some nights we have had to experiment and come up with some interesting recipes.

We left Cadiz for Barbate on Monday 13th July, this is an unscheduled stop as we initially were planning to do an overnighter and go straight to Gibraltar. The only reason we were going straight there was to hit the Gibraltar Straights at the correct time for the tidal stream and that would have been first thing in the morning, but now we have decided that perhaps they are not quite as bad as first thought so getting there at any time should still be ok. We were not over keen on Barbate but it did serve its purpose as a stopover and we were able to find a decent supermarket where we stocked up with food etc.

We stayed in Barbate for 2 nights and left there on Wednesday 15th July for our next destination which was Gibraltar. We had to motor all the way to Gibraltar due to light winds, but saying that, we must have had at least 3 knots of tide with us all the way as we averaged 8 knots, which with no wind is pretty good going. Coming down the Gibraltar Straights is a great sight and we were both quite excited what with Africa on our right and Gibraltar ahead of us. As we were approaching the marina we had to give way to an aircraft which was about to land, this is because the marina is right next to the runway but luckily for us there are only about 5 flights a day. We were also looking forward to spending just over a week in Gibraltar and having our friend Phil pop over from the UK to spend 5 nights with us.

After settling down in the marina, and completing all formalities we went to check out the sights and to see what laid ahead of us for the next week or so.
Just before Phil arrived on Friday the 17th July, our neighbour in the boat next to us was leaving his berth when he caught our boat and knocked our anchor off and the bracket holding the anchor became dislodged and disappeared into the water, and once again, after yet another incident where Ashby Girl has been slightly damaged I informed the other boat owner that he should not worry about the slight damage he had done to our boat. We then went off and met Phil at the airport, we went back to Ashby Girl to let Phil unpack and have a cold beer before hitting the sights of Gibraltar. Throughout the time Phil was with us we must have seen most of the sights, like a trip up the rock to see the caves, siege tunnels and not forgetting the famous monkeys, the museums, the beaches and so on. There was a large festival taking place just over the border so on the Sunday we thought we would nip over and check this out, We had already been pre warned not to wear any decent clothing as when you walk through the streets you will be covered with sangria. We went over and eventually found the main party, we must have got there just as the parade was finishing because the streets were actually drenched with sangria we were sticking to the pavements as they were so sticky. There were thousands of people there eating, drinking, dancing to the very loud music, everyone was dressed in traditional costume and there was a brilliant atmosphere, it was very family orientated and although everyone was merry there was no trouble to be seen, not like if this happened in the UK. Phil went diving one morning and he asked his instructor if he would dive down and retrieve our anchor bracket. So the next day when the instructor was diving in our area he dived next to our boat and in a few seconds he resurfaced with our bracket. We dined out in the evening in lots of nice bars and restaurants, but there was one bar in particular that Phil used to drag us into most days, we believe this may be due to the girl behind the bar. Another great thing about Gibraltar is that there is a Morrison's supermarket there that has a bar and also somewhere where you could lock your shopping away still in the trolley while you have a nice cool beer. Sadly Phil left us on Wednesday 22nd July after 5 great days, we saw him off at the airport then went back to Ashby Girl and got our Union Jack flags out and waved him off as his plane went passed. Phil on seeing us took a photo of this and there was an American boat next door to us who also took a photo of a couple of mad English people waving Union Jacks at a Monarch aeroplane. We spent the next day getting all the laundry sorted and Ashby Girl back to normal sailing conditions and then on Friday 24th July we left Gibraltar after our 9 day stay for our next destination which was Estepona in Southern Spain.

See photographs titled (h) PHOTOS - Spain, Portugal & Gibraltar.