Back to Gibraltar
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Wed 29 Sep 2010 08:05
> One of the jobs that was needed was a rigging check just to make sure none of the bolts etc holding the mast up have come loose. John winched me up to the top of the mast for a good look round. Whilst I was up there I managed to take a few pictures of the view from the top. Luckily all was in order and, after a quick clean of the spreader arms which were covered in sand residue from all the dirty rain we have had, I was back on terra firma again.
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> Another equally challenging adventure was our trip to the supermarket. John and I had bought fold up bikes whilst we were at home and so off we set with bags attached to the front and back of the bikes and our cycle helmets firmly in place - photos of these will follow but (un)fortunately in all the excitement I forgot to take the camera out!! The bikes did make the shopping trip very easy but took a bit of getting used to and we were very wobbly to start off with, luckily the roads round Gibraltar are fairly quiet and the drivers are also very courteous towards cyclists, although I nearly came to grief when someone dared to step out in front of me! The strange thing with the bikes is that when you turn the front wheel to steer, the basket stays pointing in the same direction and doesn't follow the wheel, which takes a bit of getting used to! Anyway despite all this we managed to get back to the boat in one piece - phew!
> Bad news though - the Spanish workers strike meant that there were no deliveries across the border for a couple of days so although we had our gas locker all set up for the new cylinders we weren't able to get hold of them so we are stuck with one tank totally empty and one tank about 98% empty - the measure we have in our gas locker measures pressure which is largely useless as if the tank is warm enough it will always register full!
> We arranged for a weather forecast from a UK weather forecasting service prior to leaving for Madeira which indicated that we would have westerlies at about 10 knots as we left, building to about 15-20 knots Friday evening until Sunday evening when it would increase to about 25 knots , and the decrease Monday/Tuesday to about 20 knots. This was about as good a forecast as we could hope for and we are looking forward to a good comfortable sail.
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