After four nights in Gibraltar we are headed to our next, and final port, the PUERTO DEPORTIVO ALMERIMAR marina near Almeria, Spain where Pandora will have her rudder fixed and a number of other repairs managed. She will be on the hard for the winter until Brenda and I return in the spring for some cruising. The marina is in a more industrial area than the one located in the heart of the Almeria historic district, some 30 miles farther up the coastline. Not as quaint but they have the facilities to address what Pandora needs and a yard to put her on the hard, something that is in short supply in Spain.
The marina we stayed in while visiting Gibraltar, Queen’s Quay, is a really nice place, reasonably well priced, well protected and central to the sights with Gibraltar rock in the background.
The marina is Med Moore, with easy to pick up lazy lines to tie to the bow. You back into the slip, tie up to the dock and pull up on the lazylines, that are tied to the bow, to secure you in place. It’s a nice system and way better than having to pull in between pilings as is the case in the US.
My Gibraltar courtesy flag.
The marina is central to the historic area with buildings that span hundreds of years. Especially from the early days when England used this port to establish dominance in the Western Med as any ships heading into our out of the Med had to pass very close to Gibraltar.
Everywhere you go, beautifully preserved buildings and forts.
Passageways opening up into courtyards.
Beautiful historic streets all to yourself on the off hours.
And yet jammed with tourists during the day.
Charming narrow streets everywhere. Not really room for cars to pass on many streets and others, just a series of steps.
With all of the narrow streets, scooters are very popular and everywhere you look hundreds are lined up. Parking is an issue but less so if you are on two wheels.
Outdoor cafes on every street corner.
Endless choices of places to sit and pass the time people watching.
No need to worry about the angle of the sun in at cafes except perhaps at noon when the sun is high.
To see the shops intermingled with beautiful military stone work is fascinating.
There is no missing that Gibraltar has a long history with the Royal Navy as witnessed by many statues including at least one of Lord Nelson.
And charming homes beautifully preserved.
No end to the interesting architecture.
And everything in the shadow of forts built over hundreds of years by the various groups that controlled the island.
Yesterday I took the tram up to the top of Gibraltar and toured the sites.
Of course, what the rock is best known for is the monkeys and there are plenty. This one, a mother with her baby. As cute as they are, they look like they have plenty of fleas and other issues. Not particularly cuddly.
The big males look pretty sure of themselves.
The rock has been an important strategic point for the military for centuries and many battles have been fought over who was going to control it.
During WW11 there was a tremendous gun emplacement overlooking the strait. The specifics on this gun are impressive. Of course, compared to today’s arms, this was remarkably crude.
The gun sat up high on the end of the rock. The barrel is no longer on the emplacement but the housing and base are impressive.
The mechanics for pointing the gun below. Imagine the shockwave that hit this when such a massive gun was fired.
The allies dug many tunnels through solid granite to move supplies.
There was a good deal of equipment behind the scenes to power the gun, pivot the base or move ammunition including this massive generator.
Out side near the gun were these laughably tiny fire buckets filled with sand. Hard to imagine that they would do anything in the event of a major fire.
The scale of the rock and how vertical it is made me wonder how they got the materials and equipment up the rough roads in the age before engines. Answer, they must have lugged it up with block and teackels as along the roads were massive iron rings cemented into the rocks. I suspect that they used ropes and block and tackle to slowly pull the heavy guns up the hill.
You really get a feel for the scale of the place when looking out over the harbor.
And a view of the marina where Pandora was moored.
There were many sites to see and each one meant a walk up and down hill, sometimes a lot of steps, hundreds. This view is just a very small part of the steps that I traversed, both ways.
There was a sign at the top of the stairs warning visitors that the apes in that area were particularly aggressive. They hang out on steps that are only about 18″ wide so it is very hard to avoid them.
So, down I went carefully picking my way past the apes. Suddenly I felt a violent tug on my camera bag behind me, and turned to see an ape with his arm jammed in one of the pockets, grasping a bag of nuts. I had forgotten that it was there. He must have smelled it as I walked by. It was pretty funny. Of course, I didn’t want it back.
I hope that he disposed of the bag properly. Based on the amount of trash in that particular area, I wasn’t hopeful and no way was I going to try and retrieve the empty.
One of the highlights of the visit was my visit to St Michael’s Cave. The scale of the cave, which I explored for an hour or more, on well paved walkways fortunately, was amazing.
The vaulted ceiling was lit with colored lights. Very impressive. Note how small the staircase looks.
The scale of everything was breathtaking.
And in one area there was a rock formation that looked a lot like an angel and has been revered for hundreds of years as a sign.
The main cavern was huge, so big that they had hundreds of seats set up to watch a lightshow.
Every few minutes a show accompanied by music. The idea sounds tacky but I really enjoyed the experience. Checkout this short video as it captures the moment well.
I seemed that everywhere I went I was experiencing a bit of vertigo but none more than when I walked across this suspension bridge over a deep ravine. With every step, the bridge swayed… Not my favorite.
Big drop.
The views were dramatic everywhere I looked.
Watching these climbers made me weak in the knees. Nothing below the guy on the right for 1,000 feet down. Perhaps farther than that…
Our destination when we arrive tomorrow about mid morning, is Almeria, Spain is about 130 miles from Gibraltar and because of the continued threat the from orca, and my being terribly skittish about encountering more of them on this leg, we hugged the coastline until we were 20 miles from Gibraltar, the farthest east that any encounter has been recorded since 2020 when the attacks first became an issue. Conventional wisdom is that you stay in water that is under 100′ deep as very few attacks have happened in water that shallow.
As I approached Gibraltar, I relied on attack records from the last few weeks and assumed that because nothing had happened recently, that I was safe. Well, I was wrong. I should have hugged the shoreline as I am doing today.
So now, I am not taking any chances and am staying close to shore until I am farther away from Gibraltar than any attack or sighting has been noted.
We will see as the rules keep changing and it seems that the number of attacks show no evidence that the problem is going to go away and may very well be increasing as more and more orcas learn the trade.
As we departed Gibraltar today, a lovely shot of “the rock” receding into the distance.
And speaking of being hit by orcas, when I was in the cave, after the light show, I heard someone call “Bob, Bob is that you?”. It was almost too dark to see anything but somehow someone recognized me from Salty Dawg, another boat that had done the rally.
Well, it turns out that he was hit too and the damage to his boat was much more severe. His rudder was badly damaged and his autopilot ram was trashed along with the internal components of his wheel steering. After the hit he was unable to steer, only going in circles, and had to install his emergency tiller and steer with that with the part of the rudder that was left.
So, what are the odds of being attacked by an Orca, a question that I have tried to find an answer to? Well, if you are a member of Salty Dawg it would be about one in three as I believe that only about six of the boats that made the run into the Med and two of us were attacked. Those are not great odds.
So, as we made our way northeast we stayed close to the coast until we were about 30 miles from Gibraltar and the coastline turned east, beyond the furthest point where orca have been sighted and now we are heading directly east to our destination. So far, so good but we will see if this strategy proves to be good.
One issue for me is that with only half of a rudder, there isn’t much to steer the boat so if we were to encounter any real wind we’d have a lot of trouble keeping the boat on track and one thing that I have noticed in reviewing the forecasts over the last few months for the western Med is that it either blows hard from the east or there is no wind at all. It seems that there is almost never a decent time when the winds are favorable to sail east.
Another issue with the wind is that when it is calm, the good conditions for motoring only last for a day or two so you have to move when conditions are good. In our case, the wind calmed down as of early Sunday morning and kicks back up from the east on Tuesday morning. This means that we had no choice but to hightail it out of Gibraltar this morning when there was no wind or get stuck for four of five more days.
And, timing is everything as my crew needs to depart on Wednesday and Brenda flies in on Friday so off we go.
I plan to rent a car to pick up Brenda at the airport in a few days. I’m excited.
So, setting aside the orca “thing” I loved Gibraltar and look forward to checking out Almeria, our next port.