Today 9 February, confident in our weather forecast, we set sail from Fuengirola at 6.30 am headed for Gibraltar.
Forecast of the European ECMWF model at 06h30: 16 knots, direction. 218°.
In reality out of the Fuengirola antiport we encountered a wave >3 meters from SW, period of 6 seconds, a 35kts wind and powerful countercurrents which at 1500rpm did not allow us to exceed 2.5kts!

Tomorrow Saturday 10th we'll try again after having carefully studied the tide charts on Gibraltar (GBZ).

The tables predict favorable currents from approx. 5 hours before the highest tide which will be in GBZ at 3.36pm. An hour after the maximum the current returns against for those of us who sail from East to West.
Taking advantage of the fact that tomorrow the wind should be more West-North West, we therefore prefer to leave at 7.30am with an hour of contrary current in order to arrive at GBZ by 3.30pm where the intensity of the currents increases considerably.
That's 45nm in total and in 8 hours we should make it to an average of 5.6kts.

These the forecast for tomorrow Feb the 10th at 7h00 

at 11h00

at 14h00 in GBZ....hopefully!