Stuck in Gibraltar and La Linea (Spain)

7 August to 14 September 2022

We set sail from Faro to Gibraltar, which is a two-day journey. Land is always a welcoming sight when you have seen nothing but blue for a couple of days. Before you even see the enormous Rock of Gibraltar, the Gibraltar Straits welcomes you with huge mountains on either side. The Spanish mountains on the European continent to your left and another large mountain climbing out of the African continent to the right. It is breath-taking, and you feel so minuscule and irrelevant to nature when these stones tower above you.

Gibraltar is a British overseas territory commonly referred to as ‘the Rock’ (sadly, the other ‘Rock’ does not reside here), stretching 5 kilometres long and 1.2 km wide. Gibraltar’s name comes from the Arabic Jabal Ṭāriq (Mount Tarik, honoring Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād who captured this peninsula in the year 711). Gibraltar and the Zues Canal are the only entrances to the Mediterranean Sea and has been a symbol of British naval strength since the 18th century. 

The Rock is considered one of the two Pillars of Heracles, which according to Homer, came to be when Heracles broke the mountains that connected Africa and Europe, allowing for western navigation in the Mediterranean to expand. 

I need to add here that we did not calculate the tides leading in and out of Gibraltar. Due to the Strait being one of only two points where water enters the Mediterranean (except for the rain), you can imagine the force with which water funnels from the huge Atlantic through a small channel into the Mediterranean. It is also worth a mention that the Mediterranean evaporates non-stop and would have run dry if not for the Gibraltar Straits. We only realized this halfway into lunch as the water bubbles around us, leading the boat in all directions. There are no waves, but you have three layers of water moving in different directions… it’s a witch’s pot, a boiling cauldron, with us, a little bean bobbing about. We switch the engine on and start to move straight again. The tide is so strong that it carries us across the water at 9 knots…we are flying. And once we reach the entrance to Gibraltar, it is not the elegant entrance we had expected.

There is heavy industry along the bay, with a smell of chemicals in the air. Added to this, Gibraltar is a port and layover for many container/cargo ships. Some ships are at anchor, while others are steaming in and out of the inlet. We must keep a keen eye on how we enter here, as these big vessels have priority in the imaginary lanes crossing the water. In addition to that, you need to keep watch for the powered people transporters, taking people to and from the African coast and Gibraltar. The wake of these causes Susie Jane to bounce even more than we would in turbulent seas. It feels like you are navigating with your inflatable pool toy, frantically paddling with your arms, amongst motorboats on a tiny lake. But, without fail, our dear beloved dolphins ensure we have a warm welcome. The bay boasts of common dolphins, striped dolphins, bottlenose dolphins, and pilot whales. The Straits are usually home to our foes (only while sailing), the orcas, from April to August, but they have moved north following the tuna run, phew.

As we have become exceptionally cheap (or resourceful, depending on who you interact with), we decide to anchor off on the Spanish side (La Linea). Once anchored, we reach into the bilge for a bottle of wine gifted to us by another solo sailor in Brighton. Her strict instruction is only to have the wine once we have reached Gibraltar. When she handed us this bottle, Gibraltar seemed so far away, and here we are, three months later, opening what feels like a 2005 Pétrus (thank you, Alvina).

Our plan while in Gibraltar is to stay a week, do some provisioning and then head over to the Canary Islands, but we have not thought things through, and there are a couple of items we should have given more attention to before arriving in Gibraltar:

Insurance

Pantaenius Boat Insurance currently insures us. A tiny clause had crept in when we had our renewal schedule, stating that we were not allowed to sail further than 20 nautical miles offshore. Twenty nautical miles offshore would never allow you to cross any ocean. So, we send our first email to Pantaenius on our arrival in Gibraltar to change our sailing area and this clause. It takes two weeks for them to respond that we would not be covered by them when we cross to the Canary Islands unless we have two additional crew on board. Our boat is big, but this is a push. Insurers would prefer more crew if anything happened to either Sander or me, allowing for the ship’s safe return to land. We found another insurer who would insure us, but the clauses and reviews seem a little slippery, but at least we have something (unless we can debate our way past Pantaenius’s clauses before we leave).

SailMail

When we sail and are more than ten nautical miles offshore, we tend to lose all reception and internet. While preparing in Brighton, we purchased an SSB (Single Side Band Radio) that allows us to communicate over extensive distances without a subscription and ongoing costs for a satellite phone (Iridium Satelite Phones, for example). SSB works like FM and AM and is a very effective mechanism to superimpose voice and information on a radio wave and transmission of said wave (see ICOM UK for more details). The setup is relatively complicated, and Sander and I require a license to operate the radio. 

The reasoning for having an SSB or Satellite phone is to be able to download accurate weather reports as you sail. These weather reports could mean sailing into strong winds or changing course to avoid them. In addition, you can use your SSB for SailMail, which will send and receive files less than 50KB (just enough to update the weather and let the world know you are alive).

Additional income
We have spent a couple of years saving enough to carry us through the first three years of sailing (if we spend modestly). Since leaving Brighton, we have eaten into the first year’s savings, and thus, it might be time to think of additional income. We have both decided that when working again, it would be something we enjoy rather than have to do. Whatever this calling would be, it must suit our new lifestyle. Sander enjoys working on the electronic and electric setups of marine equipment and sets up his business in Marine energy and electronic advice called Gysho. His goal is to educate other sailors to be self-sufficient, whilst setting up their systems. The three boats he has worked on before comes in handy as references for future sailors.

Batteries

Gibraltar is tax-free; thus, pricy upgrades to Susie Jane would cost a fraction of the original price. Sander has been longing for better batteries…Lithium-Phosphate, to be precise, but they would cost us at least £800 per battery, and we would like 6. Our current batteries are only a year old, meaning we do not need to change them for another year or two. Now that we are here, we call up a supplier in the UK, but he cannot deliver them to us while we are here, and Gibraltar Customs take over a week to process packages, so the batteries are back on the burner. Getting to this conclusion takes us two weeks. 

Polish

Susie Jane is GRP (glass reinforced plastic). With all the sun exposure, this material starts to wear down; if left too long without a protective layer, it will become chalky and turn the water white every time you wash her (literally washing your boat away). Since we purchased her in 2019, we have not had the time to polish her properly and chose not to spend the £1300 to have her polished by a professional company. Sadly, we notice that we have left this too long, and Susie Jane is starting to show some wear. Sander spends a whole week polishing her deck and hull. The job starts in the morning and ends late afternoon. After all the polishing, Sander is beginning to look more buff than ‘the Rock.’ 

Weather

When we thought we would set out, a lovely hurricane appeared on the Atlantic, pushing from America to Europe. Ironically this hurricane is named Danielle, and she is making it hard for us to leave. But then, Danielle being Danielle, invites another friend she barely knows to the party…Earl. We need to wait for these two to finish off their party before we get to leave.

These factors combined mean that we call Gibraltar and La Linea home for over a month.

The anchorage is off of the Spanish side of La Linea. There are many supermarkets to stock food, a laundrette, and Do-It-Yourself stores to pick up bits for the boat. We are warned about crime around La Linea and to secure your dinghy when you come to shore. But of course, this would only happen to someone else and not us. We lock and tie our dinghy to the shoreside and head out for shopping and washing. On our return, the smell of petrol fills the air…and yes, someone has managed to steal our fuel line and break the connector to the engine in the process. We need to head into Gibraltar to purchase a new fuel line, or else there will be no more dinghy trips for this family (unless rowing). To avoid rowing all the way there, we opt for spending a couple of comfortable days in the marina. 

The marina (Marina Bay) is something else. You sit in the shadow of the Rock towering above you. The shops and restaurants surrounding us give you a sense that you are in Singapore, bustling with life and laughter. The marina staff is accommodating and friendly, and the communal washrooms have baths too. Having bathing facilities is a luxury in the world of sailing. 

Gibraltar feels like you are back in the UK. They have the usual grocery shops (Morrisons, Tesco, and M&S) and some high street brands scattered along the shopping street. We did have to chuckle, as the Morrisons was more like an ASDA in Brighton Marina on a Sunday. People are overweight, over-sunned, and underdressed and can stop all activity in the aisle by parking their bodies and trollies smack bam in the middle of the path while attempting to read a product’s label two meters away from them. 

VAT does not exist here. Alcohol, for instance, is exceptionally cheap. A bottle of 1 litre Malibu costs less than £10 compared to the £20 you would pay in the UK. I do, however, ponder the authenticity of some of these. The amount of perfume shops here is infinite. They range from the high-end looking to a shop playing hide-and-seek under all the trivial Gibraltar-marked merchandise. The same applies to electronics; it is confusing to know whether things are real or not. The same models of phones and laptops are on sale in every shop, none of which deviate from each other…something must be amiss. An example of purchasing; when walking into one of these shops, the price would be, let’s say, £55 for sunglasses, but when an assistant comes, without a haggling word, they push the price to £45 (sure less if you take the time to haggle). 

And, of course, you cannot come to Gibraltar without going up the Rock. Supposedly, Gibraltar has the only wild colony of monkeys (Barbary Macaques) in Europe. A cable ride up, and you get to meet these creatures (I say these, as monkeys are probably one of the only animals I distrust). Many notices advise not to feed, interact, tease or carry food on your person. We soon see why, when one of the monkeys snatches a ladies’ handbag. Her son tries to wield the bag off the monkey, which leads to more monkeys joining in on the game of Tug of war. The teen loses this round, and the rummaging commences. Purse, passport, and makeup get tossed to the side of the mountain, and finally, you see what that monkey was after…a bag of crisps. How did they even see that?

I imagine the theme song for this trip and stay in Gibraltar would be something like the song by the Stealers Wheel, Stuck in the middle with you. Spain to the left of me, Spain to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you, Gibraltar. We are just waiting and waiting. Will our insurance clear us (by now, we have many emails sent back and forth with Pantaenius)? Will our untested SSB and SailMail setup actually work, and when will we have a weather window to cross? 

And just like that, all the good news we need comes at once. Our current insurance approves Sander and me as the named sailors crossing to the Canary Islands (rather than having additional crew). If this leg goes without issue, they will insure us for the Atlantic crossing to the Caribbean. We received the codes and confirmation to use our SailMail, and Danielle and Earl seem to have tired from days of partying, or at least enough for us to depart on the 14th of September.

So, I sign off on this part of our journey and look forward to telling you more tales of our now glossy Susie Jane and family in the Canary Islands.