Well, we left Mar Menor at 12 noon at the noon opening of the bridge on the canal. Ours was the only boat going out, as the wind, forecast to be 4 to 5 turned out to be force 7, sometimes gusting even more. We motored out, buffeted by the wind, and got the sails up in the lee of the small island nearby. There followed a difficult passage of sailing towards the east to get clear of a marine reserve and the cape south of Mar Menor, and that was a struggle in the teeth of the wind and a growing swell of over 1 and a half metres. Around nine miles of this ensued, during which some of us were seriously considering heading into Cartagena, but then we turned downwind, on genoa alone, and suddenly all was much calmer. The boat was surfing along at a great rate, around 9 knots, directly in the direction we wanted to go.

So we settled into a watch pattern of 3 hours on, 6 off, and enjoyed a really good sail for the first half of the journey, despite pouring rain from astern which kept getting into the saloon!

The wind died off Cabo de Gata, and the rest of the trip was motoring, and we arrived in a relatively quiet Gibraltar around 5am today. We saw dolphins en route, and a lovely tall ship called the Artemis.

Out to dinner tonight to celebrate the end of a great three weeks fun with Keith and Mon, Andy and Dave, then off back to Lagos tomorrow.