We said goodbye to Tangiers which had treated us well, and headed back across the strait to Gibraltar. And I did get my confiscated drone back from Customs! We found a decent gap between tankers and shot across the shipping lanes with no close calls. And no orcas! The orcas have been causing a bit of trouble but more on that later.

We were told by a yachtie in Tangiers that the best fish and chips in Gibraltar were at The Lounge. We moored up at Queensway Marina and found The Lounge at the end of our jetty! And the fish and chips were every bit as good as promised.

Gibraltar is a little piece of England but with duty free everything! The boat is now so full of grog and cigars I feel like a pirate. Duty free diesel as well, so we filled up on that too.

We found a good chandlery that sold Semco, which I have been looking for, so we put two coats on the teak deck and wood fittings and it looks a treat. We had a relaxing 5 days, reprovisioned, did some touring of the Rock and headed out for Spain.

That is where things got interesting. Sailing into Spain we heard two seperate distress calls from yachts who said they were being attacked by orcas. As best as we could tell, they were not too close to us, but we sure kept a look out. We were joined by a large group of dolphins, but thank goodness no orcas.

These naughty orcas have been “attacking” yachts near Gibraltar for the last couple of years. Apparently they think it great fun to swim up to a yacht, grab the rudder and make the yacht spin. Trouble is when you are the size of an orca, the experience is pretty frightening onboard and a few yachts have lost their rudders.

Anyway the attacked yachts eventually came back to say that they were not badly damaged and could keep sailing, but they sounded pretty scared. So far, touch wood, we are orca free and are now sailing away from the area where the interactions have been occurring.

Into the Med we go!