The famous rock



Monday July 13th 2015



It was a sense of excitement in the air this morning as Gibraltar was not far away. However, it would take longer than we had banked for to get there as we first faced fresh head winds and then dense fog. We had read that Tarifa had winds of 30 knots or more at 300 days a year. I had almost thought it was a printing mistake, but as we approached we had freshening winds on the nose up to 22 knots. We persisted with the sailing and tacked along the coast line. It felt good as another sail boat in our vicinity, a trimaran, was motoring.



This is a very attractive part of Spain; barren and non touristic. My wife Imelda teaches a course here every Autumn with her colleague Karmit Eversur; gnosis and rock art which is held around the caves and dried out wet lands of Laguna de la Janda. There is a brilliamt promotional film about the course on YouTube. There is also an amazing bird life here. Karmit's boyfriend Stephen takes people on bird watching tours. We are at the cross roads of nature and history where Europe meets Africa.



As always, the fog descended very suddenly with visibility of only two boat lengths, that is only 35 meters, as we had passed the supposedly attractive town of Tarifa. With three pair of eyes staring into the white milk in front of us and on the black and yellow radar screen we made slow head way; blasting with our foghorn. It gets quite tiring for the eyes. It is very busy as we were passing the head land West of Gibraltar and entering the bay between the rock and Algeciras in Spain. Boats of all types and sizes appeared out of the fog; open fishing boats, anchored tankers and big fast crafts. The multi directional traffic flow to various different places make it confusing.



We were told off by Gibraltar VTS for not fulfilling the reporting requirements as they were telling us how to maneuver around a large vessel, Captain Evangelos, just anchoring outside Gibraltar. I think they might have been mistaken, as our Class A AIS responder gives the impression that we are a much larger vessel than we in fact are. However, you have to ask permission if your mast is more than 10 metres high to navigate close to the airport, as the runway is just by the sea and the area is closed off when planes are landing or departing.



Diesel is incredible cheap at some 40 pence per litre in Gibraltar. After filling Queen's Ransom tanks we made our way to the central marina called Queensway Quay Marina. It is all friendly and small scale here. Hans and I went to the Morrisons for food shop and we all went to the very English pub by the convent and later to a Moroccan restaurant called Marrakesh which was good!



Gibraltar's attraction is more its oddity of being such a quirky British outpost at the Southern extreme of Europe rather than being intrinsically attractive in itself. Sure, the scenary is stunning with the tall rock jutting out in the sea, but the town has lots of modern developments with only a pretty small historic core. The British letter boxes, phone boxes, road sign, police cars, police boats etc add to that weird feeling. I would think that it will survive as a British colony for many years to come as a lot would be lost if it succumbed to Spanish blandness. It would be nothing!



I am thinking about leaving Queenie for some time in Gibraltar later in the Autumn. It is cheap and safe with good facilities. The climate is good. It is English speaking and the airport is at walking distance from the marinas. Captain Hastings can get his dose of English pubs and British ness! It has a closeness to a very attractive part of Spain with great nature and cities like Cadiz and Sevilla and indeed the continent of Africa, as well as the Atlantic cruising grounds. I am ultimately more attracted to the Atlantic ocean swell than mirror like Mediterranean seas! However, in Gibraltar or Southern Andalusia you can get both!



Ulric Almqvist