Ocean Marina gave us our mooring number and said there would be someone to help us dock “Mediterranean” style.  (For non-sailors this means that the berth has NO pontoons. Boats just ‘hang-on’ by the ‘bow’ or the ‘aft’ and anchor out the opposite end.)

Here we go with another first in this boat. 

We went into our berth ‘bow first’ like all the other yachts and it was uneventful. (Like all things in life. Take a big breath, shut your eyes, and just ‘do it’.)
The help was great even though when I threw the ropes they both hit him on the head! He was very cheerful and showed John how to work the anchor line.

We met several lovely people who were in transit from the Med back to England or to the Canaries for an Atlantic sail.
We had a slight crisis when one of the pilot books we needed and ordered as ‘ex-stock’ ready for our arrival in Gibraltar turned out never to have been in-stock at all! We even paid in advance to be sure of this book.  Luckily, as many boats were in transit we met a wonderful couple who were able to supply us with one that they no longer needed at half the cost. 
They were a very interesting couple.  Sailing for many years. They were around our age and were now off to the Canaries and then to Cape Hope and, dare I say, without a chart plotter!  Everything they do is by paper charts. They didn’t “want to”, or, “need to” learn how to use this new-fangled technology.  They did have a baby alarm next to their radar so if they did fall asleep during a watch it would go ‘off’ and wake them! They had just completed an 8 day straight sail from Malta. True ‘ol sea dogs’, I’d say.

Gibraltar is a safe transit stop as you wait for the weather perfect for your needs. Most of the people we met had been there for at least 10 days due to the winds coming from the wrong direction and were desperate to move on.  A couple of nights would be perfect in Gibraltar, but... 
The restaurants were OK but nothing special. Great, if you like old British pubs with not so good beer, karaoke, fish and chips and wings.
The area is only 3 miles long and ¾ of a mile wide and most of it is taken up by this dam rock!. 

The Rock has plenty of history and we took a personalized taxi tour around. This again was well worth it.   Spain ceded Gibraltar to England hundreds of years ago as part of a treaty.  It’s importance to Britain was as a strategic position to hold.

During British occupation the British have dug an amazing 32 miles of tunnels underneath the rock housing all sorts of military equipment. You don’t see any of this but you are shown the first tunnels that were built to house cannons to fire on Spain.  They had to haul these cannons up the rock - fascinating.  Gibraltar has some beautiful caves which they have now made into an auditorium. Elaine Page sang here recently it must have been wonderful to hear her with these acoustics. 
Then there are the monkeys. 

If ever they leave Gibraltar the superstition is that England will fall.
So Winston Churchill restocked Gibraltar with plenty more monkeys and made sure that Britain wouldn’t fall during WWII. Gosh, and I thought that it was the Spitfires and the USA that saved Britain – Geesh! Just goes to so we now owe world peace to a bunch of monkeys!  Hmmm… suppose there is some truth to all this after all then.

Our taxi driver stroke tour guide knows them well. The monkeys that is. He had one sitting at his front window eating a piece of pasta. As we moved on up the mountain (where the views are stunning) he opened the windows just a bit further. Hmmm.. John starts to cower in the back seat.
Then a monkey jumped in!   .. and sat on the top of the front passenger seat looking at John & I eyeball to eyeball, sharp menacing teeth at the ready to sink into John’s throat - less than 2 feet away.
He may have had a beautiful face but he scared us nearly to death. 
“Get him out.” I said.
“No problem just don’t try and stroke it.”

 We survived!
The road up is single track and it is good to go by taxi although there is a cable car that just takes you to the top.  The English bodies of the Battle of Trafalgar were brought back to Gibraltar from Cadiz and the cemetery is still open to visitors today. Lord Nelson’s body was put in a barrel of brandy to preserve it on its way back to London where he is now buried in Westminster Abbey.  It was such a great victory destroying both the Spanish and the French fleets that Lord Nelson was a real hero, leaving England to rule the seas for many years. In his honor the Queen had Trafalgar Square built and named after him. There is so little room in Gibraltar that the main road through to Spain runs right over the airport runway! 

More recently, the Spanish back in 1967 put a modern day siege on Gibraltar. The border with Spain was closed – period. (I think they are upset to have given this rock away to Britain. It’s ONLY a rock guys! Come on!). For 16 years the only entry was by ship or plane. As a result, no more Spanish workers could cross the border. Moroccan workers replaced the Spanish workers and are now firmed established here. They have built a lovely Mosque at Europa point for the new workers that come from Morocco.  I think the net result of the siege was a loss of prosperity and jobs for the Spanish, an increase in prosperity for the Moroccans, even greater insulation from Spain for the Gibraltarian economy and even greater allegiance to Britain by the average Gibraltarian than ever before. As our taxi driver pointed out to us, “only 40 traitors voted to join Spain out of 20,000 voters at the referendum”.