After a good night’s sleep, we set out to have a look at this area (La Linea) before moving over to Gibraltar. Why did we need to move at all you ask? Since we were waiting for a spinnaker, we wanted to be on the Gibraltar side to avoid the associated 20% European VAT (value added tax) charge, but the Gibraltar marina didn’t have room for us until a few days after our arrival.
We moved over to the Gibraltar side to the Queensway Quay Marina on 8/27. The “runway” is the dividing point between Spain and the United Kingdom and the architecture is very different on each side. The Spanish side has older buildings and more land to spread out and the British side has newer buildings and many high-rise apartments and hotels.
This land mass has been fought over practically since the beginning of time due to its strategic location. It was instrumental in controlling the seas during WWII and the remnants of that period are everywhere. To get a closer look, we took the Cable car up to the top of the Rock.
We had read about the colony of macaque monkeys that lives at the top and they greeted us as soon as we exited the cable car. They can be quite aggressive, and we saw them snatch several bags right out of people’s hands in search of food. Our first stop was lunch at the top of the rock which fortunately was surrounded by glass or I think they would have snatched the food right off our plate!
From there we headed out to take in the stunning views and look at some of the remnants of war. One stop was at O’Hara’s battery (constructed in 1890). Amazing to think about how all of the equipment and canons were transported up here!
We toured WWII tunnels where, at one point, 17,000 British troops lived for several years. A typical soldier schedule was: drill or haul out rubble for 8 hours, sentry duty for 8 hours, and eat/sleep for the remaining 8 hours. Wow!
A little further down were remains of a castle (8th Century) built for fortification during the time the area was ruled by the Moors. It was a fascinating day full of history lessons!
We also made frequent visits to the local grocery – Morrisons! It was like walking into a King Soopers – and – everything was in English! – We also took a stroll down “main street”. There were lots of shops because many people come to take advantage of the lack of VAT.
Our spinnaker arrived on Wednesday (9/1) and we had been studying the weather forecast to determine the best 4-day stretch for sailing to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. We always want to minimize the time spent motoring and maximize the time spent sailing, but this passage made that even more important because we had 2 additional concerns:
One – Migrant boats headed to Gibraltar or the Canaries from Africa. Since Tangier is only about 25 miles from Gibraltar, this is a constant problem. It’s heartbreaking to think that people’s lives are so desperate that they would pay someone to take them out to sea and then leave them to fend for themselves if they ran out of fuel or food and water. In fact, we heard several distress calls warning boats and ships to be on the lookout for such vessels.
Our 2nd concern was orcas! Yes, those lovely black and white whales you have seen at Disneyland! It seems they have recently (in the past couple of years) begun attacking sail boats along the west side of Spain and into the Straits of Gibraltar – right where we need to go…
This video (right) shows an Orca “encounter” on a yacht that happened close to where we were. There is no consensus on why these attacks are happening – but the suggested response is to play dead (stop motor, turn off depth sounder and auto-pilot, and drop sails). We heard one boat called Quartet on the radio right before we left asking for help after one of these lovely encounters with nature. Great ….
Nevertheless, we couldn’t wait forever so we headed out on Thursday, 9/2 hoping to reach Lanzarote sometime on Monday (9/5), a trip of some 620 nm. We wanted to cross the Strait in daylight in case of an orca encounter, but that meant the tide was against us for the first 6 hours or so – up to 2-3 kts at times. We hugged the Spanish coast for about 12 miles until Tarifa Point, when we put up the sails and and aimed for Tangiers on the African side of the Strait. We had to dodge several ships, but were pretty lucky to have a wide gap between them to get to the other side. The current eased slowly as the sun set.
We had good winds for the first 48 hours, as forecast, peaking somewhere around 24 kts or so. Our main issue was at night with fishing boats from Morocco, and we were asked twice to alter course. We try to give these boats a wide berth, like a mile, but their course can be erratic sometimes. Even 50 miles offshore, there could be a dozen boats in a 25 mile radius, and we would hear calls of “Captain, Captain, please alter course. More north, more north, captain, thank you captain”. It was difficult to know who the call was meant for, us or someone else. But we managed …
One of the annoying things on the night watch is the frequent “all ships” call that we will get on the VHF every 2 hours or so using DSC (digital selective calling). DSC is something new in the last 20 years or something, and allows vessels to call each other directly without having to hail them first on channel 16. However, it can also be used to blast everyone with a message, and instead of just hearing the broadcast message on channel 16, the “all ships” call will trigger a very loud alarm on the VHF that has to be manually turned off. It’s so loud that it wakes the off-watch crew. And, the messages are repetitive – in our case, warnings of migrant boats en route from the African coast to the Canary Islands. We haven’t figured out a way to turn these message off without also turning off other important alarms <sigh>
We arrived safely at Marina Rubicon early Monday morning – a bit sleep deprived, but had no encounters with orcas or migrant boats… Phew! The marina is situated in a lovely resort area called La Playa Blanca on the south end of the island. It seems to be quite popular with Brits and Germans. We will take the next few days to “de commission” Moxie since we’re heading back to the States for 6 weeks.
It’s been a fabulous adventure so far, but I am ready to go “home” for a bit. I’m really missing college and pro football, cool autumn nights, and all our friends and family. We’ll be back in November to prepare for our Atlantic crossing. Until then, thanks for following along on this journey. Stay tuned….
Fascinating stay in Gibraltar – I had read about those tunnels when we were exploring various itineraries for a Spain, Portugal, and Morocco trip (2020 SPaM tour canceled due to COVID!). Glad you were incident-free getting to the Canaries! When do you guys get back to the States? Safe travels…