Over 600 nm from Gibraltar to Lanzarote – our longest passage, yet! (WL 26)

Rain and storm at X-Mas made us stay in La Linea marina and celebrate X-MAS there. It was hard to find a suitable weather window to start our longest passage, yet: over 600 nm from Gibraltar to Lanzarote over the Atlantic Ocean.

We observed the weather every day and suddenly a short window opened, so we took a very fast decision to start on the next day. The night before leaving was very hard: 1.000 thoughts went through our heads and the start was scheduled for 3 am in the morning, so we expected a short night anyway.

Through the Strait of Gibraltar

Our journey started at 3 am in the morning because of the tide and the current. After studing the tide tables it became clear to start at that time. We had a pretty smooth start with not much traffic, fair winds and a calm sea state. In the Strait of Gibraltar we stayed in shallow waters and went close along the shoreline. The sun rose as we crossed the traffic zones and made our way more south.

We did not expect this: ORCA encounter!

It was about 13.15 pm, I was on the helm, when the auto pilot did strange noises and stopped working. I grapped the steering wheel and felt even more strange movements. Very strong movements.

In the next moment I saw the black fin next to me. And there were even two. 2 orcas got attracted by us and attacked the rudder. In 2020 this new disruptive behaviour started – read more here.

They interacted with the rudder for quite time. We stopped everything but then decided to act out a different strategy. We turned on the engine and went in reverse. Then they cannot bite the rudder anymore, cause the new back is the front with the keel (made out of hard metal).

We had to do this strategy two times, cause after the first encounter they came back and kept us busy another time. The whole interaction lasted for about one hour in total and after the second attempt they LUCKILY swam away without causing damage.

Information about the Orca behaviour

5 days and nights at sea

I shortly describe our 5 days and nights at sea. In general we did shifts of about 2-3 hours. During the night Michael and I took shifts, during the day on the last days also the kids had their shifts. Our animals did fine and we had the adventure of our life.

Our journey as video daily log – unfortunately only in German:

Arrival in La Graciosa, Lanzarote

On the 2nd of January we finally had „Land Ho!“, what a feeling!

It was a bright sunny day when we arrived in La Gracisosa. We anchored in front of Playa Francesca and celebrated the passage with cake and champagne. After some rest we had a wonderful time on anchor, went even swimming and visited the village „Calleta del Sabo“ on the next day. The whole next day we chilled in the sun and just enjoyed what we just achieved!

Afterwards we set sail towards Puerto Calero, where we docked the boat for the rest of the time until we flew back to Austria for some break with family & friends, work and medical advice.

We will pause the blog now happily after archiving our big goal – let’s see what the future brings!