Monday 7th & Tuesday 8th July

Well the marina is not the only tired and run down thing around here!

Gibraltar is no paradise and by all accounts the shopping rates as very poor. Excitement over loads of duty free shopping evaporated when Sarah made her first excursion into the 'town' and discovered lots of duty free shops, but they all sold the standard airport duty free fare. In fact there are loads of these shops but no variety!

The building work next to the marina is certainly continuing apace, with a huge casino, restaurants and shops as well as a new very smart marina. (Well the pictures look good!) I seem to recall that Gib is the home of the Internet gambling companies, so that might explain the continued expensive developments. The building firms involved are clearly contracted to keep the area clear and clean despite the works, so there are as many people working at keeping everything clean as working on the building. Quite unusual to see a polishing machine being run over the pavement just minutes after a concrete lorry made a delivery!

Sarah spent part of the morning polishing more of the stainless fittings on deck, so in the afternoon I was able to do my bit by converting our fender board into a passerelle (fancy yachting term for a boarding plank). We had chatted to a friendly local Stainless Steel fabricator here (Mike) and between us we came up with a very workable solution, hopefully, and by this afternoon he had produced the goods. It just needed fitting to the boat and to the teak board we had brought on deck from UK. A bit of sawing and drilling and we now have a hinged and lifting (topping lift) passerelle which is at least a whole lot better than messing about climbing in and out of the dinghy to get onto the 4 ft high concrete quay.

High tide! Not so funny at low tide.

We were going to move on to Puerto Banus on Wednesday, but a well timed text from a friend (Cathy Hunter) told us that she was flying in to Gibraltar for a few days on Thursday pm and would we like spend the day (Friday) at their hotel pool. Brilliant, so we immediately modified plans and now plan to depart on Saturday. (Makes a change from sitting on a yacht, surrounded by water.....)

Exciting few exchanges with my good friend Jan Frans at Mastervolt in Amsterdam as well as Alythea in Valencia. Short version is that we are now bound for Palma in Majorca to see if Electro Marine can work some magic on our generator. The up side is that the owner of Electro, Charles Whitehead, phoned us yesterday to discuss the whole issue and determine a plan of action. The main catch is going to be getting a berth in Palma in the height of the season! Charles had some local information to offer on this subject and so we will see in due course. However we will not arrive in Palma for at least 9 or more days, so at least you will have to put up with any more whining about this from me for a while!

Sarah checked out the other marina here this afternoon and it seems that if we call them at 12 tomorrow, we might be able to get a berth there for the rest of the week. It has the advantage of being:

1. Very much nicer.

2. Closer to Cathy's hotel.

3. Much cheaper!

Downside is that we are just starting to get know folks here in Marina Bay, but such is the way of things.

Hope to do the tourist bit over the next day or so as we gather the caves/tunnels and a ride to the top of the rock are worthwhile things to do.

[We now suspect that Neal on Bali Hai is out to top anything we do. He emailed us yesterday to say that he narrowly avoided bumping into a large sperm whale off the Costa del Sol!]