Gibraltar

 We left Barbate on Tuesday morning, after thoroughly washing the salt off the boat with the hose. There is nothing much in Barbate except expensive marina (compared to other Spanish marina, not Slovenian, those are really expensive), so we didn't see any reason for staying.

Day was just made for sailing, sunny and warm with light breeze. We put away the bimmini to enjoy the sun.

We were sailing along nicely, boys thought, there could be more wind to sail faster. I guess they are spoiled from our passage. We were flying both birds, gennacker and the main.

I manage to convince them to sail almost to the middle of the Strait, in hope to see some whales, that are migrating through in summer. It was only 30 miles to Gibraltar, so we could afford it. We saw hundreds of cargo ships, but no whales. But we saw a turtle and the best thing was we saw an Ocean Sunfish (Mola Mola) that swam 20m from the boat. Just the back fin stuck out of the water, but we could clearly see the outline of the strangely shaped body in the water and it's funny movement.

Africa!

Nearing Gibraltar

Heron tied in Queensway Quay Marina

After a long and peaceful night we wanted to explore a little. Tomaz and myself have already been to The Rock, but I wanted to go up there again. I like riding the cable car.

From the cable car there was a good view to Marina. Heron is  in left lower corner, the one with the blue bimmini.

The views from the top were breathtaking, weather and visibility were much better that when we were here for the first time. This is the view to the North, over the airstrip to Spanish town La Linea.

This monkey family was strategically placed right at the entrance.

He, too, wanted to be photographed

Tomaz listening to audio guide, on his right there is already the Mediterranean

Just couldn't stop taking photos of monkeys

Boys looking to the South with Africa in the background

Some more monkeys

We walked down, first half of the way was many steep steps

The second half was along the road, where there were remains of the history on every step - like this hole from where the Brits tried the new way of firing big guns - unsuccessfully

And there were some cute flowers too

The fort at the NW point, already at the bottom of the hill

With shortage of space one has to be inventive - I newer saw a road going over the airstrip, with cars and people traveling on it. They just close it for traffic when an airplane is landing or taking off.

Another baby monkey eating a watermelon

We walked around the town some more, and we had a snack in one of the restaurants in pedestrian area. Next we went to the chandlery (of course :-), boys wanted to see the boats in the other Gibraltar marina, but I decided to have a rest in one of the waterfront bars. This tasted even better than it looked - mango&passion sorbet at the bottom, and on the top raspberry and lemon&lime sorbet.

Tadej flew home yesterday. We're staying in the marina till Saturday, the weather will be more suitable for going Eats then. We'll sail to Alicante in first leg, and then to Balearic islands (Ibiza and maybe Cabrera), South of Sardinia and North of Sicily. Since we crossed the Atlantic in such a short time (I'm sure this was a world record - for Herons), we'll try to bring Heron home. If only the weather is as good to us as it was in past four weeks.