Plans Plans Plans: Gibraltar

Much like the Guadiana I had very strong preconceptions about Gibraltar, these were, in no particular order, its occasionally windy, dusty, concrete, and full of ex pat Brits. All of which are true.
However it does have a unique vibrant sense of its own identity, it also has some green spaces which are lovingly tended. This reflects well on Gibraltarians as space is at such a premium.

These photos were taken in Commonwealth Park. The name alone will tell you a lot about Gibraltar's place in British history .It is however along with the Botanical gardens one of the most peaceful and lovely spots to sit and contemplate.

The proximity of the ever encroaching concrete high rise urban building site which is never far away.

This however is my preferred memory. A quite amazing fact is that as we wandered around I naturally assumed that this was a 18th or 19th century throwback that had resisted the developers.
How wrong can you be, the first magnolias were planted in 2013 and the park was opened in 2014.
Not far away is the Cathedral, Anglican obviously but with a very obvious Moorish influence.

Witness the arches over the windows, again it can fool you into thinking its older than it is, its not that old 1840 or thereabouts.

As sailors we recognised the church service pennant.

During our visit we were entertained by the organist practising in the Gods above.

Back in La Linea, Spain ,it was festival week...…..

A weeklong series of events starting with a big parade, with dinosaurs. during which it seemed the entire town decamped to street level and set up tables laden with food whilst children collected sweets from the many floats passing.

I have to admit the dinosaurs were impressive,

Which didn't prevent small children from grabbing their tails!

Later in the week as we visited the boatyard to arrange our lift out for a survey we came across a familiar sight . The Festival of Carmen and taking the statue out to sea to bless the fishermen and presumably us too , as fellow mariners. Unusually this time it was a local yacht doing the honours....

All a little bit chaotic and possibly contrary to every health and safety regulation ever, but this is Spain...

The big day arrived when our surveyor was to inspect Dark Tarn, Ray Johnston was the man and after a quick run over the boat it was round to the yard to be lifted for the ultrasound survey. This basically involves separating the hull into square metres or thereabouts and measuring the plate thickness of each.

We had arranged to be left hanging in slings, luckily this coincided with Spanish lunchtime, or siesta as it has become known, and Ray was left undisturbed to do his ultrasonic thing.

This did involve removing a lot of our precious antifouling but we had prepared for that, what we had not thought about was that the shaft anode ( sacrificial zinc anode ) had become loose and had been rattling around the cutlass bearing. our prop shaft is about 28mm. our friend Marcus at MH Yacht preserve had 30mm and 25mm anodes in stock. Clock is ticking at this point and Marcus very kindly allowed me to use his workshop to grind out a 25mm anode to fit.

Lucky for us siesta had done its usual thing and overrun slightly so I was able to restore two coats of antifoul before we were launched over the patchwork of sample points Ray had scraped away on the ultrasound test.
Ray eventually left at 5 o'clock in the afternoon having done a very thorough survey of DarkTarn and her systems. In the interests of honesty I had admitted to ray that our tricolour navigation light was not functioning, however I had arranged to return to the yard to have it looked at.
The idea was to come alongside the concrete end of the boatyard adjacent to the lift bay, I was not too keen on this but an Amel turned up crewed by two young lads who had blown their engine. I asked if we could raft against them the following day. They agreed ,

The two lads had bought the Amel for a ridiculously small sum of money in the med, I believe €39,000 and were sailing back to the UK to fill up the coffers and refit the boat. They had bought a Perkins genset online and had it delivered to La Linea ( I think it was from a tank ) the hope was that Marcus's team could cannibalise one good engine from the two.

After waiting a few hours during which I disassembled the deck plug again to no avail.Steve turned up declaring he was no electrician, ( promising start!) He was hauled to the top of the mast by his young Spanish assistant and between us we fixed the problem. It turns out that because of the extra circuitry involved in LED lights they don't just stop working like a filament bulb they blow fuses. Guess what's in our tricolour now? Good old filament bulb. I called up the marina and asked for help with my lines as I returned Dark Tarn to her berth. Lynne was still in Gibraltar having her wisdom tooth taken out.

She returned after a few hours with a very frozen face. Apparently it hadn't hurt in the slightest! The dentist advised rest and care when eating so we arranged to stay for a few more days.

We decided to go and have a look at the southern end of Gibraltar and leave the top of the rock for our return in spring. We caught the bus to the crowded cable car and walked to the battery holding the 100 ton gun.

Normally this has a £4 entrance fee but luckily for us the man in charge had locked himself out of his office so he let us in for free. To be honest £4 is a bit excessive. It's possible to examine the loading room and see a very small exhibition about the 100 ton Armstrong gun, a marvel of Victorian military engineering.

The views over the anchorage are superb, its possible to see that no ship would have been safe from the guns huge projectile. Although I am still unsure whether it was ever used in anger.

This part of the rock has several small beach area that are popular with locals. The beach areas are very small but in typical Gibraltar fashion concrete painted a fetching sandy colour provides a suitable substitute.

The steep cliffs provide an imposing background.

In order to reach the most southerly point in Europe it was necessary for us to walk through one of the many tunnels that riddle the rock. This particular one was dug by soldiers and the regiment involved proudly placed a plaque at the entrance. It's a little damp and spooky to be honest.

It's also quite long.

However yet another surprise awaits at the tunnels end. It's a Mosque used by Gibraltar's Islamic population. It has a superb minaret which dwarfs the lighthouse on Europa point.

There are the ubiquitous military installations again with state of the art Victorian Armstrong guns.

There is a small exhibition in the gun emplacements describing Gibraltar's pre-history.apparently at one time when the land bridge was breached there would have been the world's biggest waterfall in the view from Europa point.