(Nov 5th - Nov 16th)

Nov 1st  - Left Menorca at 2pm, Don and Maureen, some new friends, waved us off at the dock!

The Rock is in sight!         

There's Alex filming in the last photo, as always she's got the camera! Hey somebody's got to do it!

Nov 6th - We've arrived in Gibraltar!! After 5 days at sea and 617 miles we made it!

There were certainly good days and bad days and times when we were asking ourselves why we had decided to do this sailing business. For the first two days Andrea was sea sick, and Alex had got a cold. But we all got our sea legs and the weather eased off, leaving us with no wind at all! But it was amazing, just surrounded by sea, no land in sight and the wind whistling through the rigging (yes, cheesy i know, but true!) We soon fell into the routine of night watches and the days blurred with the night. You slept if you needed to at 4pm, or went to bed at 7pm to wake up at 3am for your watch.  There were moments where we were all sat in the cockpit, reading with the sun blazing and the wind keeping us cool, we could certainly do that for 3 weeks across the Atlantic! But our last night was the worst, the boat was slamming into the water, dropping off the waves. I lay trying to sleep and felt my body lifting off the bunk and then being squashed back into to it as the boat slammed into the water. For the first few times it was exciting feeling the boat drop, then waiting for the BANG as the hull hit the water, but it got old quickly, and we were soon reefing in the sailings trying to slow the boat down. 

We got into Gibraltar at 2:30am on Nov 4th, and had to navigate the habour in the dark, the Gibraltar Rock looming in the darkness!

Nov 7th - Took a look around town, this place is tiny you keep going in circles! It is only 2x2 miles in total! Anyway found a rather funny sign that simply said "Spain"!

We enjoyed shopping around, looking at cheesy souvenir stores! But the best part was Tescos, at last English food! Seems like they're also getting ready for Xmas here, Seasons Greeting!

Nov 9th - Did a tour today of the Siege Tunnels that run through out the Rock. There's 32 miles in total, more tunnels then there are roads in Gibraltar! But we only walked around a mile of it. It was really interesting though, our guide was a sergeant from the army, who was only 5'3"ft! He told us all about how Gibraltar was, and still is a very important military port, because it's right at the entrance for the Med, so it has the power to control who goes in and out. The Tunnels were built between the 1700s and up until WWII. at first they were used to get cannons and ammunition to good look out on the Rock. But during the World Wars they were extended and used for  safe transport of ammunition. Nowadays it's one of the largest training facilities for Tunnel Warfare, so as we were walking around there were bullets laying on the ground.

Nov 12th - Did a BIG shop at Safeways. We then spent the entire day listing it all, and stowing it . . . .we all got a little stir crazy!

<------Hmmm. . . .I think Tom's lost it!

Nov 15th - Today we had the pleasure of a personal tour of the Rock, and our guide was Marianne, a friend of Andrea's from college! And she did a good job too! It was raining, so she drove us around and we stopped whenever we pleased. We saw the famous monkeys of Gibraltar, they were so tame, you could stand right next to them and they wouldn't flinch, it was quite sad really. 

    The lovely Marianne! The perfect tour guide!

<-------The marina where we're staying

<-------- This is pretty much the whole of Gibraltar, you can see Spain vaguely on the left. Africa is only 5 miles away across the Straits, if we'd moved a little to the left you'd be able to see it!

    <------Graffiti from the 1700s, Joseph Crow left his name at the top. You can tell it's old by the cursive script,  if you look carefully there's more old fashioned writing, Nelson someone also left his mark. I couldn't believe it, 200 year old graffiti!

<------Rob Newton was there in 1773!