Bobby Murdoch | nice and warm
Left Spain on the morning of the 29th of July as planned and smashed it across to Ceuta in a strong breeze, funny old place Ceuta, stapled onto Morocco in much the way that Gibraltar is to Spain, it has been pretty popular for an invasion or two due to its geographical position and has been changing hands since way back when, It's a Spanish Autonomous city now and has been part of Spain since 1668, maybe a bit of a consolation prize as folks kept nicking Gibraltar off of them, had to go into the Marina there as your not permitted to anchor, its pretty much a big Spanish military outpost with a couple of castles and is also the home of the other pillar of Hercules. Place needs a good clean but the folks were very friendly and it was a good place to wait for the right tides and wind direction to go through the straits of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic.

Ceuta

This statue is outside a church in Ceuta, there was no sign explaining the meaning of it so I used my imagination, Priest with a pointy hat and a big stick, glad I'm no the wee boy holding his hand!
Ended up waiting three days for the right conditions to get through the straits, the winds here pretty much come from the east or the west and the currents mostly head in an easterly direction so when you have a fairly heavy sailboat with a wee engine like me, you need to make sure your going through with the wind behind you and the tides at their most advantageous for the direction your going, everything gets funneled into the narrowest part beside Tarifa and even though the forecast was for light winds I had 30 knots and a fairly large following sea behind me and got shot into the Atlantic like a cork out of a bottle, which was great, stopped for the night off the beach in Barbate and then headed round Cape Trafalgar towards Cadiz.

Straits of Gibraltar

Cape Trafalgar
Cape Trafalgar is where the square in London gets its name from after the Naval Battle in October 1805 between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the Spanish and the French, the Admiral in charge of the British was Horatio Nelson, hence why he is the guy stuck on top of a plinth in London's Trafalgar square, jeez, with a name like Horatio, you'd better be famous for something eh! It was super foggy as I sailed past the Cape and I was almost expecting those old warships to come sailing out of the fog! Very spooky......

The Franco Spanish fleet getting battered...
Just to bore you with a wee bit of history, back in those days, the practice was for opposing sides to form two opposing parallel line of ships and and batter one another with broadsides of cannon balls, The bold Nelson confused pulled a sneaky and sailed his ships in two columns at right angles into the middle of the enemy line, and although the heads of those columns copped a bit of a hiding, the 27 British ships defeated the 33 enemy ships, the Franco-Spanish fleet lost 22 ships and the British lost none but poor old Nelson was shot by a French Musketeer(not one of the famous three though) and died just before the end of the battle, the things you have to do to get a square in London named after you!

Nelsons battle plan
Sailed up to Cadiz from Cape Trafalgar and stayed in the Marina Puerto America, this place is apparently usually pretty busy with cruising boats but there was only a few other foreign boats there due to the ninja covid virus! Another old city with a lot of history and wee narrow streets, well worth the stop.

Cadiz

Cadiz again....
When I was leaving Cadiz, there was quite a big sea as a strong wind was against the tide making the waves stand up, I thought it was quite rough until I passed a fisherman, standing at the back of a wee boat that was no more than a punt, waving at me whilst pulling his net in and rolling a cigarette all at the same time, impressive stuff indeed, I felt pretty inadequate for the rest of the day.......
I sailed up the coast and up the Rio Guadalquivir which leads to Seville, I never went that far though, I only went up the river as there was a town called Bonanza! remember the TV show?? Pure disappointment though, couldn't find the Cartwright ranch anywhere, in fact, there was nae cowboys at all, had the theme tune in my head for the next few days though!

The Cartwrights......they wurnae there!
Next stop was Mazagon at the mouth of the Rio Odiel where Christopher Columbus sailed from on his way to spread disease, chaos and completely spoil the day for all the folks in the Americas!

Mazagon Marina, I anchored in the river just outside.
That was the last Port of call in Spain, the next day I sailed up the Rio Guadiana which forms the border between Spain and Portugal and into the Marina at Vila Real De San Antonio to deal with all the formalities of checking into Portugal , quick visit to the Portuguese " Policia Maritimo", part company with some cash at the Port Captain and that was it, easy! Nice wee place, plenty of tourists about.

Vila Real de San Antonio
And another thing about Portugal, according to my DNA profile, I'm 2% Portuguese, who would have thought eh! Especially with my pasty white Scottish skin tone, maybes one of my ancestors were playing hide the sausage with a Portuguese sailor........makes you wonder!
After a few days I headed along the coast and into a huge anchorage behind Ilha da Culatra near the town of Faro, the Islands just a big sandbank really with a few wee fishing villages on it, quiet at night but mental busy during the day with tourists from faro and Olhao, most of the anchorages have been fairly quiet since I left Valencia but this place had a gazillion boats in it, but it was huge so there was plenty of room.

Ilha da Culatra

Sunset in the anchorage

Lots of folks living full time on boats here, I reckon this fella is a bit worried of sinking! I reckon he'll be fine.....
Sailed up to Ferragudo bay next, which is really the harbour for a town called Portimao, top spot, its got everything you need, big anchorage, you can row into the beach and leave your dinghy, village nearby with most things you need and a Lidls within rowing/walking distance for all the other stuff, cracking trails along the cliffs, best anchorage I've been to for ages.

ferragudo anchorage

Ferragudo Cliff trails
One of the things you need to be careful about when your in a busy anchorage, is when you get in the water, for example, don't go swimming downstream of other boats first thing in the morning after everyone has had their morning movement, just in case you get run over by a wee brown submarine! your not meant to pump out close to land but some folks do, this reminded me of summers swimming in Girvan as a kid after watching some kids in a wee dinghy the other day down the beach , we never had a dinghy but we had something even better, an inner tube from a tractor tire, my Dad fashioned a bit of a hull from chipboard and clear perspex so you could see stuff floating in the sea below, sounds good eh? then you remember the things that were floating in the sea in the 70's, there weren't any sewerage treatment plants back then....... ha ha! those kids in the dinghy don't know how lucky they are, they don't have to dodge massive poo's that looked like baby otters swimming towards you...........and if you wanted to dive off of something at the beach, the best place was the end of the sewerage pipe, just had to time it right!!!!!! Jeez! happy days indeed!!
Ill leave you with that thought, off to Lagos tomorrow and the boat is going into the yard on Tuesday.
Stay safe folks, wear yer mask!

See, even Hercules wears his mask