Final days before Canaries

With memories of the Rock, we traipsed around Gibraltar taking in more scenes. From street level, we snapped a photo of the Moorish Castle high up above on the Rock (that we also visited during our time on the Rock).

Medieval fortification

An area called Casemates Square is very popular with numerous coffee shops, restaurants, high-end shopping, and of course regular tourist shopping. There are a lot of older buildings with history including the old police station.

Street scene

Old police station

We have noticed that Gibraltarians are very polite and always hit the brakes to let pedestrians cross, even when not at crosswalks. This is not so in many other countries.

Our new sails, a Genoa and staysail, finally arrived from Leitch and McBride and we were ready to depart Gib...

Hanging the Genoa

...but we had one more stop to make across the border in La Linea Spain. Once again we walked across the airport runway when the light turned green, then breezed through Customs with only a flash of our passports, and we were in Spain.

Judy in pedestrian crossing with green 'Walk' light

Our destination was to our favourite tapas bar, Carlos and Eduardos. This thriving 3-generation business is celebrating their 55th anniversary. Sipping our wine, sampling liqueurs, and enjoying our tapas, we watched as everyone was busy, busy, busy and so happy and friendly. We will miss this place for sure. Be sure to Google it for directions if you are ever in the area!

3 amigos - Jordan, Carlos, and Judy

We walked back to Sea Turtle in the pouring rain with full and satisfied bellies.

Chanty has a new friend. A beautiful golden coloured large dog! They chase each other up and down the dock and she bats at his nose. No claws though, just playing. Hilarious. Yet she hisses at other cats here and won't make friends.

The next morning, we were prepared to leave on passage to the Canary Islands, however the morning voltage reading was quite worrying as the failing house batteries were down too low. So for the sake of a delay of 1 day, we thought it best to bite the bullet and get new ones while we could here in Gib.

Jordan located a knowledgeable seller who had AGM deep cycle batteries in stock that would be a suitable replacement. Actually better in the sense that they are sealed and don't need topping up like the existing ones. It took most of the day and evening to do the install and top up the charge.

So our departure was in the morning to take advantage of favourable conditions to get through the Strait of Gibraltar. The current in the narrow Strait is predominantly eastward because the Mediterranean Sea evaporates more than what rain or runoff can compensate for. So westbound boats through the Strait can find themselves fighting an incoming current but they can also encounter severe chop caused by current over undersea irregularities.

To mitigate these conditions, the conventional wisdom is to head out to the Atlantic Ocean through the Strait at about 2 hours after high tide and with an east wind. Well, the weather window was now good for the passage to the Canaries - with the exception of a wind coming off the Atlantic through the Strait.

But we went for it, and finally sailed away from Gibraltar under bright sunny skies on November 2nd for a 4- to 6-day passage to the Canary Islands.