We had a great day in Cadiz, (via ferry from Santa Maria not far from the boat). The ancient walled city was at one time the second largest city in the Roman Empire and its theatre (a much better view on Google Earth than you can see from the road) second only to Pompeii in size. Lots of twisty windy streets and historic places. It is still an important shipping port as it has been mostly through the ages. Pete found a street side oyster vendor shucking oysters and had a few at 2 euro each! We went into the main Cathedral and were lucky as it was the 750 year anniversary of its consecration (or whatever it is they do with cathedrals) and there were many artworks, statues, carvings etc on display on loan from various museums which filled up what would normally just been a huge big space – very interesting.
We left for Barbate the next day for an overnight to catch a weather window for the Straights on Saturday. This proved to be a good move as the weather system had hurried up a bit and the next day the winds would have been too strong from the east. We breezed though no trouble on the right tide, wind and current. We passed Cape Trafalgar just before and imagined a time travel back a few hundred years landing us in the middle of the Battle of Trafalgar! All the way we had been hearing Pan Pan calls form Tarifa on the VHF about two rubber dinghies with people on board in the Straights. Then we saw on the instruments two Search and Rescue boats hanging around together just into the Straights. It turned out to be refugees being picked up by the Spanish authorities. We missed being there first on site by about an hour! Thank God we didn’t get by them first.
Dolphins welcomed us into Gibraltar waters as did some very big ships. We couldn’t get into the Gibraltar marinas as they were full so are at Alcaidesa on the Spanish side of the airport. Apparently you walk across the runway through customs to Gibraltar. We find out tomorrow.
