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Sunday, August 29, 2010

Phoenicia closing on on Gibraltar

THE GOOD SHIP PHOENICIA is closing in on Gibraltar:
ARRIVING AT CALPE…

Over a thousand years ago they arrived, looked at the Rock and called it Calpe. Now they’re back - at Ocean Village.

After 27 consecutive days at sea, Phoenicia is expected to arrive on Sunday 29 August in the safe waters of Ocean Village marina for some well-earned R n R. The 21 metre vessel, a traditionally built replica of a 600BC Phoenician cargo ship, is currently recreating the epic first circumnavigation of Africa achieved some 2,600 years ago.

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The latest entry in the Ship's Blog (Position Report 241) reports favorable weather. Background here and follow the links.

UPDATE (30 August): They arrived safely on Sunday (Position Report 243):
We successfully made landfall earlier this morning after a challenging passage along the final Straits of Gibraltar where strong headwinds and sea mist nearly prevented us from going any further. However the strong current enabled us to beat off the head winds and although this meant positioning ourselves near the centre of the Strait and facing on coming ships in the adjacent traffic lane, this strategy eventually paid dividends. Even so it was a tense night and fortunately our luck held.

In Gibraltar we are guests of the Ocean Village Marina where we plan to stay until the end of the week when we will start another leg of the expedition towards Carthage in Tunisia.