Gibraltar

In order to get to Gibraltar in the morning, we left the marina in Benalmadena around 20:00 last Saturday.

Thick fog appeared mid-morning, and local lore says it would clear by lunch-time, naturally it didn’t.

We thought about waiting for it to lift but we are already way behind schedule and apart from the fog, the forecast was alright. Being only 12 hours away from Gibraltar we made the call to leave.

Visibility was extremely poor, so extra care was needed when leaving the port and it would have been hard to enter Gibraltar under the heavy fog curtain considering the insane amount of shipping traffic. So it was a night where there was absolutely no wind, dead calm seas and 10m visibility. The radar and the AIS got a great work-out, as did our fog-horn. Fortunately, around 4 am, it did lift eventually and we were able to make our way into the marina without issues.

We’ve been in Gibraltar for 4 days now but coincidentally every stop we made so far has either been on a Sunday or a public holiday, so everything is shut (in Spain, everything is shut between 12:00 and 17:00 every day anyway!!!). Again, as seems our luck, not only did we arrive in Gibraltar on a Sunday, but the Monday was a public holiday in Spain, so we had a two-fer.

The parts we bought to be delivered here in Gibraltar  - Bimini top, cockpit cushions, Parasailor and Lazy Bags - all arrived in the region, but there was a day or two of phoning and running around before we could locate them all and get them cleared into Gibraltar. All worked out in the end, and the work started this morning. We’re also having adjustable legs installed on the salon table so it can be lowered into a double bed or lifted into a table. Nice!

When all the work is done we’ll start planning our passage through the strait , which due to its geographic characteristics needs a bit of calculation so as to match the time we leave with a suitable combination of tidal stream, currents flow, wind direction and strength.  With all that , we don’t believe we’ll be able to leave Gibraltar this coming weekend as previously planned which could delay our arrival to Brazil a bit more. Probably Monday or Tuesday, better safe than sorry though...

The city is quite nice with lots of live music bars, good restaurants and is itself a big duty free shop too and for that reason, you just feel like you HAVE to buy something! We got a waterproof (for obvious reasons) video camera to document our journey.

An interesting thing: hitchhikers. Some people go from boat to boat offering themselves as crew asking for a ride to the other side of the Atlantic! One of their marketing techniques seems to be trying to advertise the fact that they won’t waste any water by washing either their clothes or themselves (!!!!!!!!!!!!), Alas, Miss Bossy's team is complete...sorry...

We still haven’t had the chance to go up The Rock, check the Siege tunnels, feed the apes and all the basic tour, probably tomorrow if the weather is good.

See you when I see you,