We spent Saturday again at La Herradura writing lists of things to do & buy before we commence the ARC. Steve has the water maker going & we now have lots of lovely water. We had a couple if swims & can’t believe how much cooler the water is. We haven’t been in the water since before Almerimar & the difference in temperature is amazing.
Sunday we headed off early towards Marbella. Unfortunately we only had a short sail with the spinnaker before the wind dropped & we had to motor most of the way. We stopped for the night in a small marina called Marina de Bajadilla. It wasn’t too expensive & was relatively quiet. We were pretty keen to get off the boat, so had a short wander even though it was Sunday & we knew nothing would be open. We did find a small cafe open & had a couple of beers & tapas. We had a quiet night on Pannikin, finished watching Game of Thrones & early to bed.
Monday we went onto Gibraltar. It was pretty cool watching the rock appear in the distance (with its own cloud cover!). Plenty of large tankers & ships anchored outside the harbour & plenty of boats whizzing around Gibraltar, La Linea & Algeciras. We managed to score 4 nights at Marina Bay. Queensway Quay marina was full & we didn’t particularly want to stay at La Linea due to reports of theft. Gibraltar is a funny place. From the water it is a mass of buildings squashed into the base of the rock & around its sides. On land, most of it is pretty unexciting, but there is an ‘old town’ within walls which has a bit of character – probably for tourists who arrived by 1000s on cruise ships. Our marina is right beside the airport runway – just boats, then a small amount of water & then the runway – no fence or anything. To get to the border & into Spain at La Linea you have to walk or drive across the runway. Gates come down & guards appear to block the runway when a plane is due!
Tuesday we spent looking for bits & pieces at the local chandlery, which we thought was very expensive. We also checked out a couple of supermarkets, Morrisons & Eroski, to see what they stock. We walked across to La Linea to look at chandleries but were told there were none! We will have to look into that. Steve decided to take the local bus to Algeciras to see if we can claim the import tax we paid on the water maker. As I write this, he is still not back, so will have to wait & see what went down. We still have another 2 nights here.... will do some provisioning for the ARC tomorrow & keep looking for items we need for Pannikin