Wednesday  Aug 3rd :  Today's Blog by David . 36:08.91N 05:21.32W

This trip, both in the Channel Islands and now Gibraltar, is reminiscent of  Simone’s and my experience in the Caribbean following  the 1997 Atlantic Crossing in ‘Next Tomorrow’. Then we limped from port to port for repairs in between trying to keep commitments to friends to meet them and provide them with a sailing holiday. At least one couple spent the whole time in Rodney Bay. OK, so it WAS St Lucia, but it was not what they signed up for.   I do feel sorry for Susie and John who find themselves stuck in Gibraltar, hardly an exotic tourist destination,  rather than sampling the delights of the Moroccan coast as originally planned.  However, the boat has to be fixed……..so what news there?

Sean arrived back this morning to  explain that an 'o-ring' seal on the gearbox had been misaligned when the gearbox was assembled and did not make an effective seal. So the good news is that all that is  required is to renew the seal and put the boat back together. However, Formula Masts (who are paying to fix it under warranty – blogs passim) insist on using the “right” part rather than relying on Sean’s proposed fix. So, the bad news is that seal is not available in Gibraltar and has to be shipped from England - Formula would ship the ring to arrive Friday lunchtime. 

Given that it is going to take at least 8 hours to reassemble to gear box and re rig the boat – and the rigger doesn’t work at the weekend - that was not ideal - it felt like we were here until next Tuesday. (To say the least, morale was low at this point.)   However, common sense has since prevailed and  Oyster have managed to get the spare ‘o-ring’ for the mast  to the engine repair guy who is travelling out tomorrow AM – to get here by lunch time.  So Thursday PM and Friday we will have the drains up fixing the engine and the mast.  At the very best – that means we are here until Friday night.………..So, toys are still in the pram – just!   

(BTW – sure it is a pain, but no other boat brand that I know would provide this kind of support – we  would have been  here for weeks with most of them).

Meanwhile, we have resolved to stop doing maintenance stuff. if we don’t look we won’t find and will still have half a chance of getting to Lanzarote by the time Linda and Alison and the kids get there. The wind is forecast to be good and from the right direction … but it’s looking tight though.

So what else has been going on?

Well – we have a good fix on the airline flight schedules  because the marina is handy for the airport….

One other stroke of luck has been that it happens that ‘Hawkley-ites’  the Davis family have an apartment in Spain near the frontier with Gibraltar and have kindly offered us some distraction.  On Saturday, they took us on a Tapas tour to La Linea – the border town in Spain.

I can’t say that I knew what Tapas was save that it was foreign and sounded vaguely Mexican – and that to me means spicy – ugh -  so I was very pleasantly surprised to find out how nice it was.  It was a splendid evening out. Nick and Anne Marie were also kind enough to take Susie to the beach yesterday and then to entertain us all at their home last night:

…. an excellent evening in which we all participated with varying degrees of commitment. Bob, seemed to be most assiduous in keeping up with the round which led to some uncharacteristic behaviour on the journey home including a vigorous song and dance routine on the airport runway….

In his capacity as CIC the Escape Committee, John has been busy looking for tourist information. He found that Tripadvisor recommended 23 “Must See” attractions in Gibraltar. On careful evaluation 22 of these were various aspects of the Rock - all of which the team had done on the trip round the Rock on Saturday. So with at least two more days to kill here………we will probably venture back over the border tonight.

That fish pie is still lurking in strange places…….