This morning we telephoned Marina Bay and they confirmed a berth for two nights. We really want three so may have to move back into Spain if we get booted out. As we arrived all the shoreline apartment blocks and the marina itself were decked out in Union Jacks. A bit jingoistic we thought but it transpires that tomorrow is Gibraltar day which also means that everywhere will be closed and the restaurants full on the one day we would like to do the island tour. So its a trip to Morrisons for food and an electrical shop for us today to find an adaptor for the electrical connection - this being the one place so far we can’t use our UK standard connection plug! The berthing master got shirty with us for being too slow when coming into the berth (slow and steady is our mantra now after one or two previously mentioned episodes) and even shirtier when he noticed that we were still flying a Spanish courtesy flag. We atoned by promising to wear red clothes for Gibraltar day.

One thing I find a bit frustrating is the amount of motoring we are doing on this trip. Thus far we have motored for 140 hours which is the equivalent of 6 twenty four hour periods or 12 twelve hour days. This represents about one tenth of our total time away and more than 20% of time at sea. All out of necessity of course because we need to maintain our schedule and often there is very little wind (and we do choose the less windy days for passages). I had imagined only sailing when the wind blew favourably in the right direction but checking the log book I see that we have averaged over 100 hours of motoring in each year we have had the boat. It makes you wonder how our sailing forebears ever got anywhere without engines and I am reminded of Patrick O’Brien’s Master and Commander series in which an awful lot of the action takes place on shore while waiting for the wind to blow in the right direction.

I was just going to write that it looks like the Easyjet flight is the only flight today when an aircraft landed. There is a childrens' picture book about an airport just like this one that springs into life for the one arrival of the day.

Off to Morrisons now and then sort out the red outfits for tomorrow………………

ps have now been to Morrisons but found a brilliant chandlery on the way for a few little essentials, including the required electrical adaptor. Some photos this time to keep you enthralled. Next time I will wax lyrical about Cadiz, reflect on our naval history of duffing up the Spanish and describe our pole rigging technique (exciting or what? necessary anyway as a reminder of how the pole works since we have reverted to lazy sail handling).