Trying to get out of the Med!

La Linea, really is right next door to Gib…it takes about 5 minutes to walk to the border. I had been strongly advised by a helpful cruiser in Cartagena for us not to go to Marina Bay, Gib as it would be very expensive and snobbish. La Linea was soooooooooo much nicer, she had said, and so it was. We walked across the border without any problems on two occasions, once for the tourist thing (one and a half hours in a minibus to do the Rock, the caves, the museums and the apes) and once to get the duty free ( a couple of electrical items and some binoculars)…….cunningly smuggled back across the border disguised as second hand. So that was Gibraltar……… done!

La Linea was obviously meant to be a huge development but I think they have suffered from the current Spanish economic situation and so finishing the building of facilities etc  is on hold. Pity. There are many liveaboards here as it is a very cheap place to stay….only 10 Euros a night through the winter months. The marina has become a home to one small dolphin that had recently appeared with two others who then left him alone….I wondered if there was something wrong with him but the marina staff said he had been given the OK by a conservation group. There were certainly plenty of fish around for him to feed on.

We stayed a couple of extra days here waiting and hoping for suitable winds to get us through the Straits without hassle and in the end, we left when the winds died down to a comfortable westerly force 3, meaning a bit of a slog but still better than crashing into the usual force 6 headwinds which would have been impossible to circumvent. There is a constant current through the Straits as the Atlantic rushes in to replace water lost from the Med by evaporation. So, with unrelenting headwinds and a current to battle against, leaving the Med is quite an effort!

It eventually took us nearly 24 hours to get through the Straits, past Cape Trafalgar (which was unfortunately rather uninteresting to look at or to photograph) and on around to Cadiz. On occasion, our speed dropped to less than one knot over the ground though we were making over four knots through the water. That means having to push through three knots pushing against you of wind and current (for the less nautically inclined) and, if your speed was three knots through the water, you wouldn’t be going anywhere at all!

Cadiz is a lovely place, suffering from some neglect which is a pity, but a very interesting place to see nevertheless, full of history. I read somewhere that it may well be the oldest city in Europe so that’s some claim to fame. The city of Jerez is only 10 miles (or it may be kilometres) away, a must see for me because of the Spanish Riding School there. We were stuck there until the NE Portuguese trades subsided a little so that we could tackle the notorious Cape St Vincent. ……..but weather forecasts change rapidly around these parts…… Hmmm.

We had a day out in Jerez de la Frontera, going via train, very clean and cheap. The riding school was a real treat for me. I could have stayed for hours watching the horses training. If we’d gone the next day, we could have seen the “show” but I think it was far more interesting for me, as a horse lover, to watch them going through their paces……the young inexperienced ones were fascinating to watch especially as they tried to carry out the more complicated manoeuvres…….the capriole for example. It was also the first time I have seen the “Spanish Step”….amazing….and they really stamp hard!!

In the end, we decided to chance it because if we dithered any more, we might never leave at all. So we set off for a two night trip to Lisbon, about 250 miles in all, half of them more or less west and the rest more or less north, rounding the bottom left hand corner of  conveniently square Iberia.

We made some good progress until part way through the night when the tide/current/wind turned against us and we struggled at times to make 1 knot. Cape St Vincent was therefore a complete no no until the weather improved. We ended up battling 35 knot headwinds ( Force 7) and a horrible lumpy sea to get into Portimao, a hopefully sheltered spot and under 10 miles away from Cape St Vincent,  before nightfall. The nicest part of this leg was a spectacular show of dozens of common dolphins feeding, about half a mile away (their prey, probably tuna, leap right out of the water to try to escape). These dolphins then turned towards us and spent the next half an hour or so playing around the bow. I got a nice little video with my camera of their antics. Later that evening when I had just fallen asleep before my watch in four hours time, I was suddenly woken by something landing on my shoulder. It was a swallow that was flying around inside and outside the boat, trying to find a landing spot. The poor thing eventually settled in a corner as it got dark and went to sleep but it died during the night. It must have been exhausted, possibly blown off course by last week’s strong winds. I always hope they will make it safely but I suppose dying in one’s sleep is a better way to go than drowning.

Portimao is a tourist spot on the Algarve so it’s pretty and clean but getting into the marina was more than a little tricky as we came up the river early in the evening towards it with the full force of the Nortada blasting us at 30knots plus, when this wind is usually at its strongest…..I have since learnt all about this NW wind that builds up most days off the Portuguese coast, caused by warm air rising rapidly over the land that heats up in the morning and most common during June and July. Aha…….just as we are trying to sail up this coast…..Hmm. It quickly produces a NW and therefore coldish blast from the sea that frequently gets up to Force 7. We were driven strongly onto the fuel berth by it, where we spent the night….no chance of getting off till peaceful conditions resumed the next morning. Luckily they didn’t charge for this  because the marina berths here are very expensive and one night’s fees were enough especially as the simple meal we had ashore that offered roast lamb at 9 Euros & a bottle of local red at 10 produced a bill of nearly 50 Euros……..Their equivalent of VAT turned out to be 23%. Ouch! Enough of Portimao. Time to move on……..

So now we started to expect the daily Nortada blast and had to plan a strategy to get us around Ponta de Sagres (Where Henry the Navigator used to “hang out”) and then the ever so slightly more notorious Cape St Vincent which so many sailing ships of old have failed to circumnavigate successfully…….no engines you see! This Cape which almost makes a right angle on the smaller scale charts is the most SW point of Europe and therefore has a sort of romantic air about it…….there aren’t many spots like this…….Cape Horn is another of course.  I digress……………….. We got to Ponta de Sagres in a dayhop and then spent two days at anchor waiting for a quiet moment, via the just ever so unreliable weather forecasts, in which to leave. This came very early one morning as expected and we set off, motorsailing with determination. Cape St Vincent was only a couple of miles away & could surely be conquered easily but would we be able to find somewhere suitable to anchor for the night once around the corner? The wind and the current might mean we could only make a couple of knots once the Nortada set in and this part of the coast is mostly barren cliff face. Well, we eventually rounded the Cape quite easily and I got a good photo or two to prove it, then, we did make an anchorage at Arrifana some way up the W coast which I rather liked because the exposed rocks were delightfully contorted geologically (Africa ”crashing” into Eurasia a few years ago) but, we rocked and rolled here all night as the Atlantic swells blasted in and I read that the beach here can be a Mecca for surfers…….. One night was definitely enough and another very early start was needed to get to Lisbon…………..