Introductory Note
As part of our Systems Series for the Garcia Exploration 45 aluminum sailboat, we have included a Review of the Galley in the embedded video. See our other System Review articles such as the Electrical Review.
We've reset our Schengen visa days over the winter and also enjoyed the culture and the local people while living in Tangier, Morocco. Now that its March, we will start sailing again with warmer weather and longer days. We're now ready to head into the Medi for some fun. Except for the fact that the Corona virus is becoming a potential looming issue on the horizon.
We planned to head to the EU confident that there, virus testing would be done extensively and that medical practices are modern & available. Back in February, the Corona virus was still an unknown that could potentially lead to all kinds of quarantine policies. Given the spread of this new virus, it was possible and even probable that Morocco would be locked down soon.
We had arranged by email to have shipped and pick up, our new Gennaker sail. On the recommendation of a friend, we arranged to have it shipped so we could pick it up in a small family run marina in Motril, Spain. We could make it there with a couple of day sails and visit the Gibraltar Rock along the way.
We made a sail plan to follow the Moroccan coastline almost to Ceuta and then cross the Gibraltar Straits to La Linea, a large Spanish marina situated very close to the border with Gibraltar. We had heard that the Gib marina was in a bit of dissarray and that they often don't answer the VHF, perhaps due to lots of expansion & construction that's going on. We booked the marina using Navily, which was simple and an app that we recommend using. We planned to spend a couple of leisurely days in Gibralter doing the tourist thing. We needed a few Chandlery items as we couldn't find a Chandlery anywhere in Tangier. Apparently the Tanja Bay Marina is planning to add one in the coming months.
The evening before leaving Tangier, we moved Chloe over to the marina's visitors dock in Tangier so that we could get an early early start the next morning to catch the currents along the Moroccan coastline as planned.
The marina told us the day before that the customs folks would bring our captive drone over first thing in the morning so that we could leave at first light. They told us there would be a 'storage fee' of 200Dh. We made sure we had enough local cash to cover this fee and a tip for the nice dock folks that had helped us. We wondered why they had a storage fee instead of simply making drone flying illegal, like every where else.
We said good bye to our dock buddies and the cats and spent the last night on the visitors pontoon. Morning came. No customs. Another hour later. Still no customs. 'Phone calls, VHF calls and texts and calls and still no customs. Finally a custom guy showed up in a taxi and told us to come with him over to their central office on the other side of the port. There we were now told to pay $140 if we wanted our drone back. We were also told to pay for the taxi ride of the customs representative.
Our sail plan was to leave 2 hours before high water Gib. We were now 2.5 hours late and we had no local currency remaining to leave a tip for the dock workers as we had planned. Enough said. It's best to avoid Moroccan customs if at all possible by not bringing in a drone or ordering anything by mail that will be imported into the country.
We set off along the coastline as planned. There is a reasonably constant current running East, into the Med on average but it's particularly useful on the north side of Morocco if you time it right. It's useful up until Ceuta, the Spanish Enclave. Here it is best then to turn North and jump the TSS in a perpendicular direction, North over to Gibraltar as the predominant winds are Easterly and Westerly.
Being the Gibraltar Straits, the TSS here is busy as all Western Medi traffic passes through it. Half of the world's shipping traffic passes through this TSS.
On March the 3rd, 2020, We followed this big 'L' track from Tangier to Ceuta to Gib starting with very light following winds and then shot over the Strait in 30 knots of wind with a max speed-over-ground of 10.2 knots.
Once underway, we realized that our paddle wheel speed transducer had clogged up. This meant our boat speed through the water was reading as Zero knots.
The whole short sail took only 5.5 hours and we covered 36.4 NM. The wind died as we arrived, sliding past a set of anchored super tankers.
Upon arrival at La Linea, and just as we were arriving, we again were hit with about 25 knots of gusty wind and the swell was quite nasty given their visitors dock design. A very tall concrete dock with heavy rubber bumpers that project out by a foot or so. Our A3 fenders plus 6 std barrel fenders helped to prevent damage, but the rubber bumpers attached to the concrete quay stuck out further than our fenders could protect. We lost some wrap during all of this bashing around. No problem, though, it's an easy repair and we added a larger A4 humpty-dumpty fender to the shopping list. Just remember to set your fenders high when visiting La Linea marina - it was the best advice given to us from a sailor friend we met in Tangier!
The marina at La Linea was a nice, clean marina with good showers and a simple walk to the Gibraltar boarder.We wandered though the border control gates and caught a tourist mini bus tour, directly as you pass through customs. This turned out to be well worth it. It included a drive all the way up the Rock by a funny driver with an English sense of humor and included monkeys, caves, military tunnels and a scenic vista point.
We really enjoyed our day trip in Gibraltar. As you would imagine, it is pretty densely populated with 32,000 people living in 2.6 square miles. The are four main economic sectors within Gibraltar. Tourism is popular with cruise ships visiting and whale watching tours, the driving tour we took, and the monkeys are probably a big draw too. And let's not forget that two James Bond films filmed here! Shipping is big here as they are the #2 oil bunkering location in Europe behind Rotterdam/Antwerp. Their VAT free zone status, low corporate tax rates, and incentives for international businesses all drive Financial Services. And the fourth segment that has recently grown to be a substantial part of the economy here is online gambling. The border with Spain is very active as about half of the people working in Gibraltar reside across the border in Spain.
The border was not always as fluid and was even closed by the Spanish throughout the 1950's-1980's due to sovereignty disputes. Two referendums (1967 and 2002) that would grant Spain some degree of sovereignty both failed to pass by large percentages. Looking forward, Gibraltar will be leaving the EU with Britain as Spain has reached some sort of Brexit arrangement with UK.
It seems that there were frequent military conflicts here with all the Spanish attempts to regain control of Gibraltar by military force throughout the 1700's and then in WWII, Germany even tried to capture Gibraltar. Their 'Operation Felix' was unsuccessful due to Spain’s reluctance to enter the war and allow the Germans onto Spanish soil.
While in the Nature Reserve, a monkey jumped on Peter, clearly recognizing an alike mentality, and managed to unzip his pack-pack zippers in less than a second. Their naughty fingers are far more capable at un-zippering than humans are. There are about 300 Barbary Macaque (the species with no tail) monkeys here and are the only wild monkeys found in Europe. The species is listed as endangered and is declining, however, in Gibraltar, they are increasing in population as they are highly protected. The majority of this species lives in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.
A British pub lunch, a hardware store and a Chandlery, finally. We bought some project materials and hiked back to the border. We officially entered the EU and started our 90 day Schengen visa clock again.
We were unable to buy a Navionics SIM card for our B&G Zeus3 plotter to cover the Eastern Med, however but will likely find one along the way.
We hung out in La Linea for a few days and then set off for some day sail jumps, heading East along the Spanish Costa del Sol.
Along the way, Dawn released her latest version of our EV Hotel App. The App to find hotels with EV Chargers. It's really proving popular with the surge of electric cars that are finally coming over to Europe too.
How do we get our physical mail and our packages dealt with?
If you are cruising and need a remote managed mailbox? With physical mail forwarding, secure scanning and VPN services. We highly recommend this company: Traveling Mailbox
