#13 ESCAPING THE STORM

Sailing is a sport and lifestyle with many aspects and different faces. It isn't always sunny and warm with perfect winds. That's obvius and i think that's what makes this lifestyle unique. The leg we finished now wasn't one of the sunny ones, with perfect winds. No, it was exhausting, cold and rainy, and the winds sucked. We started in Ibiza, our goal was to reach Malaga within 5 days. Our weather forecast announced strong westerly winds at the end of the week so we wanted to enter the street of Gibraltar as soon as possible.But with 140 nm (250km) the strong winds arrived and the waves became higher and higher – we had to fight for every mile we got closer to the cape we had to round. In the night we couldn't get any further by sailing so we had to start our engine. Not that sleeping inside Liv was easy for the last hours as she fought her way through the waves, but because of the engines noise it now got even more uncomfortable. There are always two of us on deck for their night watch. One navigates at the charts and the other is steering. We slowly fought our way forward, always next to the cliffs. The lighthouse on top of “Cabo de Gato” was always in sight, but the cape is still far away. The cliffs seemed to be quite dangerous, but in the dark we could only guess how they looked like and how big they really were. “How close can we get to the cliffs?” asks Adi, the helmsman at the moment. “The charts say we still have some space!” But as we see the brakers crashing into the cliffs and realize how clear we can see the white spray, we both scream “Fuck! Tack! Now!” For the next few tacks we kept a bigger distance!
It was nearly sunrise when we rounded the cape and the lighthouse, and now we can see more and more of the coast. We wonder who might be living there and how the cliffs would look like now? Anyway, the important thing is that we'll reach a harbour in the next hours. For this time it's not malaga but that doesn't matter. At first we need a rest and a warm shower!