Gibraltar’s October Wait Times Split by Ship Size, Not by Week

Gibraltar isn't a loading or discharge port. It's a transit anchorage, the stop where vessels running the Suez to Atlantic corridor, or the reverse, bunker before pushing on. That makes it a clean place to watch how a pure bunker call behaves across ship sizes, with no cargo operation in the way.

Our own AIS data for October 2026 gives a solid base: between 20 and 77 vessels tracked per segment, a real benchmark rather than a guess. The spread is wider than a quick bunker stop would suggest. Capesize averaged 39.7 hours at anchor (median 17.9 hours, 31 ships), the longest of any segment. Panamax and Kamsarmax came in shortest at 15.9 hours average (median 9.6 hours, 53 ships). Ultramax sat in between at 28.2 hours (median 10.1 hours, 75 ships), Handysize at 21.5 hours (median 10.9 hours, 49 ships), and Post-Panamax, on a smaller sample, ran second-highest at 30.7 hours.

The gap between average and median in every segment, roughly double in most cases, says something on its own: a handful of long waits are pulling the average up while most vessels clear faster. For laycan planning, the median is the safer number to build around, and Gibraltar should go into the voyage estimate as a variable by segment rather than a fixed short stop.

Early November looks different, and it's a much smaller read. A one-day snapshot from 01.11 shows shorter waits across the board: Capesize down to 9.5 hours on 9 ships, Ultramax to 13.7 hours on 24, Handysize to 6.7 hours on 17. That's promising but unconfirmed. A single day with as few as 9 ships, or 4 on Post-Panamax, can be moved by one vessel's position. October's month-long numbers remain the reference until a few more weeks of November data come in.

Separately, VLSFO at Gibraltar has eased over the same stretch, from $803.50 on 26.10 to $789.50/mt on 04.11 (shipandbunker.com). That's a bunker price trend running alongside the anchorage data, not a cause of it.