Atlantic Rollers

Atlantic Rollers

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Gibraltar Nov 22-25

Monday, November 24th, 2008

We  arrived in Gibraltar Friday afternoon about 3:00pm.

I was on lookout when we sailed and motored into the harbour to anchor. That was a bit nerve wracking
keeping track of all the ships, bouys, sailboats , tugs ferries etc.

We split into two watches and luckily my watch had Saturday off.

I rode the skiff into Gibraltar, we are anchored over a mile from the quay we are allowed to land at and
then John and I headed out to see the sights and do some geo caching.  I had never done that before. Geo
caching consists of looking up interesting places that people have recorded the GPS coordinates for and
then listing them on the Internet for others to find. At most places there is a little box or bottle with a
notebook which the finder signs. Often there are other little objects like coins, little stuffies, cards (we
always left a Picton Castle card) fridge magnets etc..

We bagged 5 of the 8 Gibraltar caches! They were in interesting and out of the way places that lead us to
WWI and WWII gun emplacements tunnels and natural features. Pretty cool.

Today we were on watch so it was “make and mend” we washed all our sheets and bedding and “soogied”
out our bunks with bleach and water to kill off any hitch hikers before we head South.

In the afternoon I helped Ben and Susie work on renewing the footropes on the fore lower and upper
topsail yards.  I learned how to do repair serving, winding tarred yarn around the wire to keep water out
and got thouroughly tarry and greasy.  The tar we use is pine tar mixed with turpentine or some other
solvent and ha a really strong smoky smell.

I’m off tomorrow, Monday, so I think I will wander back ashore and maybe go to the museums and do a
little surfing and emailing at a pub somewhere… Not a bad life at Gibraltar so far.

Thanks for reading.
KJ 

Here are some pictures from my wander around Gibraltar

Posted in Ashore | 2 Comments »

2014 Postscript

Me on "The Rock" with our fine ship in the harbour below.
Photo by John Gareri


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