Day 4: 2nd July
Motor sailing, wind is very fickle. Had a bit of a drama last night. I was on watch - my 2100 - 0000, we were slowing down but I put that down to tide - doing just under 4kts. I was up looking out for ships, when suddenly the engine revs died down and came back up again. I also got a strong smell of fish, so thought we may have hit a school of fish or a large one. I went to wake up P. He came up and we noticed a vibration in the engine. He tried to put it in reverse and there was a loud clunking sound. We both knew then that we'd caught something around the prop or the leg. He tried reverse again, but still the same noises. In forward there was no noise, but a vibration. The vibration was worse at a very slow speed, but eased at normal speed. However, at our normal revs, we were now only doing 2 kts. We were looking in the water to see if we could see us dragging anything but it was night, too dark. P couldn't understand why it looked like we were moving ok through the water but only doing 2 kts. I told him we had been slowing down. He took the helm, turned us around and suddenly we were doing 6kts. WE had 4kts of tide against us. For the next 9 hrs we struggled along between2 - 3kts and finally on P's watch 0600 - 0900 we must have dropped what we were dragging, or it cut through or something, as we started to increase speed. When I came on at 0900 we were doing 4 - 5 kts, were still motoring as there was no wind, and there was a thick fog!! P had had the fog all morning, sometimes very thick.
We only had 2 hours to get round the cape and into Gib - should be arriving about 11am. And then the wind came in. It wasn't supposed to come in until the afternoon, but here it was...right on the nose and all of a sudden. We started slowing down, whitecaps started forming and it was now going to take us 4hrs to get around the cape. When P came on at 1200 we adjusted course and headed straight for the coastline of the rock to try and get out of the wind a bit. This also meant the wind was now not right on the nose and we could motor sail.
It still look us much longer to get around the cape, but we did!!
Then, we had to bypass Gib and go into the Spanish marina to officially check out of the Schengen Visa area. Tied up at the visitors jetty at the marina, took our paperwork and walked 1km up to the border, got our passports stamped, walked back to boat, left that marina and headed back to Gib. We were booked into Ocean Village Marina, called them up and they came down to help us with our lines.
We are tied up on a pontoon right next to the runway for Gibraltar airport. It's actually a bit of fun watching the planes land and take off. Fortunately there's not too many and not late at night, so it's not enough to get annoying.
Walked up to the square to get Fish and chips for dinner it is after all Fish and Chip Friday!!