When we were still 300-400 miles off the coast of Spain we began to see a big increase in the amount of ship traffic. There was a rather steady pattern of ships going in and out of the Med from all directions. Ships would tend to follow lanes of traffic, more or less. As you can see in the first of these pictures they are coming and going North, South and the East. A few were angling in from the Southeast too. This is a photo I took of out chart plotter, I’m sorry it is so blurry but the boat was moving around quite a bit and I could not hold steady. We are the boat in the middle at the end of the yellow arrow. Keep in mind the scale of this picture is 600 nautical miles. The boats show up a lot larger on this display than real life. Ships are large but not near 30 miles long like the chart plotter displays. We could not even see any of the boats around us when I took the pictures. But it gives you an idea of what we were trying to keep track of. You still wanted to pay attention because they were all moving around and we were too.
The next picture of the chart plotter is about 120 miles from Gibraltar. You can see the steady pipeline of traffic in and out of the Med here. Soon after this photo we began to cut through to the North edge of the traffic and get closer to land. We wanted to get out and away from the main shipping lanes before dark. Our plan was to hug the Spanish coast once we hit the Straits, we figured it would keep us out of the major lanes and possibly give us better seas.
Our cut to the North came when Don calculated a little break in the traffic that we could slide through. About this time the winds from the East started picking up wildly and blowing against the current running into the Med. This made the waves stand up nice and tall. We had sharp breaking waves that were not particularly pleasant. But we made it though and into somewhat calmer waters before nightfall.
It was still a busy night with ships all around. Unlike some other watches, we had to constantly watch on this watch. If you lose track of which lights are which out there it can take quite a while to get re-oriented again. It’s important to keep the information you are receiving on the AIS screen lined up with the moving lights you are seeing on all sides of the boat. In the middle of the night we ran across a large carrier-type vessel and support ships. The lights were brightly colored blue, white red and green on the carrier and were very confusing. What made it worse was that none of them was broadcasting AIS so they just showed up as a big set of lights with no explanation. The main ship was just barely moving but the support ships seemed to be hanging between the coast and the big guy. The vessels we were tracking both visually and on AIS would disappear when they got behind one of the military vessels. All in all it was a pretty intense evening.
Our first glimpse of the Spanish coast was during the night as we approached. We could see a faint loom on the horizon from the lights of the coastal cities. As we got closer I could make out shoreline lighthouses flashing over the sea. I checked the view with the night scope as was able to barely see the outline of the land. It was good to know we were close. When I awoke for the 6 AM shift the sun was up and the next picture is my first view of land. This sunrise image is the Southern coast of Spain close to the entrance of the Straits of Gibraltar.
We got in close to the Spanish coast as we worked our way around to Tarifa which is at the Western edge of the Straits. The water was more calm close to land and we were shielded from the East winds still blowing out of the Straits. Once we rounded the corner at Tarifa we were in the Straits which is a body of water about 19 miles wide that separates Spain from Africa. I included a picture of a marine chart so you can see where we are in the world. We are parked in the marina in Gibraltar right now at the little red arrow.
I created a poor quality panoramic picture of the view sailing down the Straits. It’s not such a good job because we were moving and I had a hard time getting the edges of the pictures to line up. Anyway, I decided to post it anyway. The left side of the picture is the Spanish coast. Just to the right of the mast you can see the outline of Gibraltar. The land mass outlines that you can see further to the right of the picture is Africa.
There are a series of wind farms along the Straits. It must be a very productive place to put the wind mills. It was blowing like crazy as we were going through. I included a picture of the Spanish coast with a row of wind generators along a ridge. Looking further to the East down the coast we were able to make out the outline of Gibraltar. Looking 19 miles to the South is the African coast. The pictures I was able to take do not show much detail, it was rather hazy out. You can make out the outlines of the coastal mountains.
The closer we got to Gibraltar the more dense the ship traffic became. The port of Gibraltar and the Spanish port of Algeciras are across from one another is a big bay called the Bahia de Algeciras. The bay is about 7-8 miles long. The two ports handle an incredible amount of shipping. Huge ships were constantly going in and out of the bay and it was a bit dicey getting across to the other side. I included a few shots as we got closer to Gibraltar that include many of the ships and ferries. Remember you can click the pictures to enlarge them for more detail if you wish.
The final shot in this series is of Gibraltar as we are entering the bay. The back (West) side of the big hill is what we Americans usually think of as the Rock of Gibraltar from the Prudential advertisements… I'll take some picture of that side when we get there.
