gibraltar

back in palma we found out that argentineans can come without a visa to europe and stay up to 3 months consecutive and 6 per year if they go out of europe for 3 months. some complicated rule which in simple terms meant that we could not stay in Europe after august 31. big problem considering we decided to cross the atlantic in november. so we changed plan from the originally intended stay in the south of spain to another place outside the European union. That only gave us two options. morocco or gibraltar. after making inquiries of marinas and chandleries we decided on gibraltar and headed there.



so from ibiza we had the last sail of the med. approximately 300 miles south west on what were the most perfect weather conditions of the last couple of months.
favorable winds and currents followed by no wind some times and flat seas and many many dolphins swimming around. No clouds, beautiful skies… etc. we really had all one imagines on a passage. It was rather emotional, at least for me; as I will be getting off the boat for several months; so it felt like a perfect farewell and close of a chapter.


The only complicated part of this leg came when we had to round the rock of Gibraltar. This was a race against time. There is a constant easterly current from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean of 2 knots. That means we already had current against. In addition, this current can be reversed or increased depending on the wind and the tides. to have favorable tide we looked at the charts and figured out we hat to arrive in Gibraltar, at the marina at 7:20 PM that is one hour before high tide. The calculations gave us the best favorable times to sail around from 3:20 PM until 7:20PM. We could not stay out one minute after because the current would start to play against us. In addition we had strong winds against (20 knots) which would make it impossible to advance with both current and wind against. We force the engine, motor sailed and generally tried to get the best speed for the last 4 hours of our sail, having the last hour a speed of even only 1.5 knots… but finally unbelievably enough we made it into the marina at 7:19PM . we could not believe it when we made the entry in the blog. Exactly on time. A bit stressful but we made it.




once in the marina we relaxed, cleaned as usual and started packing for our trip to madrid and for me my departure. we also went to the immigration authorities and were pleased to have confirmed that, being a British territory, argentineans could stay here without problems and without the 3 month cap that we had in spain. so we found the place that would become home for esteban and puerto seguro until november. a perfect spot with a good and comfortable marina, chandleries, many restaurants shops, and just a walk (and a cross of a live runway) away from spain. a very interesting place indeed.




after so many miles our boat needs serious maintenance. its over 32 years are really showing, not to mention the thousands of miles that we have covered already. There is nothing really wrong except that every item on board needs to be looked at, inspected and in some cases some parts replaced. so esteban will do just that in the next three moths to come. Puerto seguro will be like new again and ready to cross the atlantic at the end of the year.