A steady stream of traffic along the dock at Gibraltar brought an interesting assortment of crew seekers from geeks to hippies and more. Luckily for us, Dean from Melbourne asked if we could fit his bicycle on board and on discovering he'd spent the last two years cycling 20,000kms around Africa we figured someone who could do that would probably be a handy crewman. And so he is. Dean was a fitter and turner before he left Australia travelling five years ago and in three days of hard work he and Phil have cleaned up much of the to do list. Fitting the strong points to tie down the flexible fuel tanks was a particularly challenging and fiddly job requiring the headliners (the ceiling) to come down, blocks to be resined into position under the decks and fittings attached. Everything came together and we finally left Gibraltar Friday evening to a slow start punching a 20knot wind through the Straits. Once we turned the corner of Africa the new asymmetric gennaker went up, our sp eed increased and we settled into a great downwind run, albeit still dodging traffic. A beautiful sunny day with 12-18 knots gave us our first day's run of 158 nautical miles. We are loving being out here and really sailing again. Day 2 was excellent. We caught our first fish ever on Songline and had two nice fillets. The sailing was wonderful. In fact we felt so chuffed about everything we decided to leave the asymmetric up for the night as we thought we'd had enough practice getting it up and down quickly and gybing the boat in general. A couple of exhausting hours later, after unwinding a wine glass (where the asymmetric wrapped itself around the forestay) and untangling the lines on the sock that douses the sail we've decided not do that again. Day 3 was much quieter. The shipping traffic is starting to thin. Heavy fog covered the sea for most of the morning and then again in the evening so generally there wasn't much wind and we motored much of the time keeping our daily average run around 155 nautical miles per day. Day 4 dawned cloudy and still. However, we're not purists, the engines are running and we should make Lanzarote late this evening. Interesting sightings have included several whales, lots of dolphins and also flying fish.