Gibraltar stuff
Minka of Southampton - Cruising Log
Edmund Wigan
Fri 14 May 2010 15:24
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Despite the heading I am going to start with news
of my brother William. He is sailing his home built steel replica of Joshua
Slocum's Spray in the Indian Ocean. Replica in the broadest sense as I doubt
Joshua had a generator, fridge, freezer or air conditioning. William has been
sending his daily position by Thuraya satellite text message and I have at last
figured out that I can plot these on my chartplotter. He is heading East and his
last three positions are shown in this photo of my chartplotter.
 If you haven't recognised it that is the south
of India with Sri Lanka to the right. I think he is going to Sri
Lanka but he hasn't said. The picture below is his boat Rowan Spray when she was
launched in 2004 in Dubai. He has a blog at http://rowanspray.wordpress.com/
unfortunately he hasn't got the technology to update it via satellite so it
doesn't have details of his current journey.
 Back to Gibraltar. I have been having a very lazy
time. My engine is fixed and I have been finding my way around. They have a
Morrisons supermarket here which sells much better donuts than the one in
Hunslet. I have replenished my stock of tinned junk food.
The rock itself is a bit like a polo as it has lots
of holes in it. Every time there is a war they seem to tunnel into it either to
put guns in positions they can aim at Spain or to create underground hospitals
etc which is what happened during the second world war. There are also some
natural lime stone caverns with stalactites and so on. I haven't been inside yet
but took a photo showing the gun emplacements from the outside.
  I am a bit surprised they needed guns, a couple of
Russian female shot putters whizzing cannon balls off there would put me off
enough to go home. I walked along to the east coast today and found some beaches
and the Church of our Lady of Sorrows.
 You can see that they have a very effective
planning control system here. The quality of building construction is
illustrated below. For a complete promenade to tip over is a bit more than
normal erosion.
 And finally to add to my pyrotechnic
collection............
 Yes, another fire
station.
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