We decided to day sail from Almerimar to Gibraltar because the weather was good and we really didn't need to overnight through one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Unfortunately, good weather in the Med means no wind and so we motored all day every day. The day before our last leg we hit FOG! Something we've never encountered before. The photo above is Fuengirola Marina, 10 hours out of Gibraltar. The journey was now going to have to take a couple of days. At lunch-time we judged that the fog had cleared sufficiently for us to feel safe - Ha! I don’t think there is any such term as “sufficiently” when it comes to fog. It’s got to be cleared completely and we found that out the hard way. We've never sailed in fog and we do NOT like it. Nerve-racking and we never ever wanted to see it again. However, the very next day we got stuck in Estepona. We had the same routine as the day before. Set the alarm, got up and had coffee and prepared for our last 30 nm sail into Gibraltar while we waited for the sun to come up (about 8am these days). All looked good. As we were about the cast off, the chap on the boat next to us said “you’re not going out there in that fog are you?” “What fog?” we asked as we could see around the marina quite clearly. The chap said “Well, I can usually see the Rock of Gibraltar right over there and I can’t see it, so that means fog”. Grrrrr…. we sat, and sat, and sat. At 14:30 we started to hallucinate - “I think I can see the Rock” ; “Yes, I err think I can see sort of an outline” So we set off. With 30 nm to Gib we certainly didn’t want to enter Gib in the dark so we had to hustle. We intended motoring at an average of 6-7 knots instead of our usual 5 knots. |
Lenny had found the fog horn the day before and without mentioning it to me decided this was a good time to start using it. I don’t think my heart has raced so fast in my lifetime as he blasted the bloody thing without notice. I swear to God, if I hadn’t needed him to sail the boat I’d have knocked his bloody lights out!
As luck would have it, the fog cleared within the hour and we were off at 7 knots. We had a fall-back marina only a few miles away, but decided we could make Gibraltar before nightfall. Small problem though, it turned out that Gibraltar had it’s own little fog problem! Who’d have thunk? Not really funny now.
We must have been good in a previous life because it cleared just as we were entering the Ship anchoring area and we were able to round the Rock with clear vision. We headed for the nearest marina and were tied up an hour before sunset. That was one anchoring beer we really enjoyed.
They tell us that it is unusual to get fog here at this time of year, but we are still hearing the ships sounding their fog horns all night long and it doesn’t clear until lunch time each day. We are doing some provisioning here and getting a new chart for our crossing to the Caribbean so we will be here a few days. We’re in no hurry because there’s a low coming through this weekend and we want this fog to clear before we head down the Moroccan coast. Hope to go into Rabat so we can land-travel across to Fez and then to Agadir for a land-trip to Marrakech.