What? More Fog!

Monday 8 October 2018

We awoke early on Monday morning, eager to get up and get going.  This was it, it was really happening, we were going to sail round Gibraltar and head into the Mediterranean. 

At least that's what we thought until we looked out of the window. We were enshrined in thick fog.  As you can imagine, by now we were sick of the sight of fog and there was some colourful language from Mark!

But, what can you do? It was out of our hands, whilst we could plan and control most things, the weather was not one of them.  So, I put the kettle on and we had a leisurely breakfast whilst discussing tactics.

We knew that the journey would take about 8 hours and that we would want to arrive in Sotogrande before nightfall, so the latest we could leave Barbarte was 11am local time. All we could do was wait to see if the fog lifted.  

Barbate has a large fishing fleet as it is the main source of employment for the town and by about 10am we heard the engines of a number of fishing boats. Intrigued I went to investigate as the fog was still around us in the marina.

Sure enough, there were about 20 fishing vessels heading out of the marina and out to sea.  It was like a scene from Wacky Races as the mad dash for the best fishing spots commenced.

This got us thinking.  When we arrived the day before, the fog had been very localised.  Was it the same today? Did they all know something we didn't? 

Fortunately, Mark had found a website that provided access to webcams in ports and marinas all the way to Tariffa, so we were able to monitor what was happening along southern Spain

We weighed up our options and in the end decided to go for it.  If it was too bad out there, we could always turn round and come back.

So, at 11.15am precisely, we slipped our lines at Barbate and headed out of the marina into the fog (which was starting to disperse). 

Sure enough, by the time we reached the open sea, the fog had disappeared altogether and we were en route to the Mediterranean!