2011-10-02

On Sep 17 we leave our lonely bay and the fishermen and start heading for Sardinia in mostly light winds.

The three and a half day cruise to Sardinia is surprisingly often enlightened when dolphins show up, some times two, other times schools of four or six. It seems they love to play with the slim hulls of our cat, swimming alongside, jumping in front of our bow, and returning backwards between the hulls.

Twice we saw a sea turtle, that is to be fair, Friederike was the one who spotted them. The second time we decided we wanted to take a photo and circled around the turtle. Initially, the turtle didn't even ignore us but after the second circle it clearly became annoyed, dove down and was gone.

Approaching Sardinia the wind increased. At 15-20 knots sailing was just great. 20-25 knots, no problem we can tie in a reef, which was followed by more reefing when the wind accelerated further. At 40 knots we had quite a bit of waves and the wind chill was considerable. We put on full Ocean gear despite some 30°C. At the end we were glad that we reached a calm bay in Sardinia. But during the night we had thunder storms. The wind whistled through our rigging. We didn't measure the speed but it must have been in the high 50 or low 60 knots. So clearly fall was coming which can turn the lovely Mediterranean sea into a night mare. We decided to head out the Med as soon as the wheather would permit.

After another night we pulled out our hook and headed West again for a stop over in Mallorca. After a few relaxing days in Palma de Mallorca harbor, some fixing, shopping and sight seeing (beautiful Jugendstil villas and one of the largest European cathedrals) we finally left the Balearic Islands for Gribraltar or the Rock, as the British would say.

With fair winds we reached Gibraltar on the afternoon of September 28 and were lucky to find a berth in the Bay Marina, just big enough to fit us in (if you have difficulties parking a car in a tight spot try a 13m catamaran...).

The Rock is really a fascinating piece of land. With 42 km of tunnels, most of them dug during world war 2 it has more
streets below than on its surface. The Rock is a steep piece of land (as you can judge from the picture with the Victoria tower light house). We did a hike and it was real work. But lots of spectacular views on the Mediterranean Steps hike, sight seeing high lights such as the siege tunnel, built to better defend Gibraltar during the three and a half year Siege by the Spanish troops in the 18th century let us forget all efforts. An then St. Michaels cave. It is a wonderful stalactite cave extending incredibly deep into the earth. The greeks for whom the Rock was one of Hercules' pillars believed this was the entrance to the underworld, Hades, for they could not see nor reach the bottom of the cave. We barked a few times but Cerberus wouldn't return our call.

And of course the Monkey Mountain is called this name for a reason. Hundreds of Macaques (few as cute as the one on our picture) linger around and on the street, longing for Frank's ice cream, sometimes four or five jump on cars that drive by, sit on the windscreen, on the roof, and on the side mirrow stretching their arm through that little creek kept open for some fresh air making driving the car an ever increasing effort. And don't believe they leave the car when you speed up. They seem to know that placing themselves right in front of the driver will slow the vehicle down considerably and only aggressive use of the window washer brings control back to the human.

We are leaving Gib for either Madeira or the Canaries, or first Atlantic leg. Stay tuned for an update.

If you want to see more pictures click here.