When we finally decided we should go, we sailed to Espalmador in the Balearic Islands. It was a nice big beach with warm water and I counted twenty boats anchored there. Then a big catamaran full of people came. They didn’t anchor, but drove right up onto the beach. I paddled Sunset, my kayak, then tied it to our anchor buoy and read. The next day, we went on a two day passage to Gibraltar. It was quite calm, but I kept expecting to be blown off course like Odysseus in the Odyssey. I was really excited to get out of the Mediterranean because even though I like it, Greece especially, it is hazy and I hadn’t seen a clear day since we entered the Mediterranean.

We arrived at Gibraltar in the evening, and the next day Mom and I went grocery shopping. We were out of eggs, milk, sugar, and were low on butter and flour. It took two loads to get all the food back to Blue Hour even with our cart. In the grocery store we even found maple syrup, something we hadn’t had since my birthday in November (the Greeks use honey all the time). There is a runway cutting through Gibraltar, which the grocery store is on the other side of, and people and cars go across it all the time. When a plane is about to land, they close the gates on either side and we could watch the planes land close up. It was a nice change to be in Gibraltar because the people there are very friendly. Almost everywhere we went, people said “he’s lovely!” or “what a nice dog!” about Sirius. We were not used to people understanding us when we spoke to them.