The night before arriving in Gibraltar was truly a once in a lifetime experience if you are in the right place at the right time experiences! While Scott was on watch between 10pm & 2am he noticed the boat’s wake was glowing in the dark… and could see some “shapes” coming off the sides… good thing when Jason came on deck just before 2am he told Scott he was seeing bioluminescent dolphins! Thank goodness Scott came down & woke me to see the phenomenon. Truly amazing… it only happens in certain conditions and this area near the strait of Gibraltar is one of them… the plankton in the water give off a glow as a defense mechanism and as the dolphins swim through it it creates a glowing streak in the water!! Since dolphins are such amazing smart creatures, we are pretty certain they were having as much fun creating the glowing streaks as we were watching them. We are so lucky to have seen this !
As I came on watch that morning at 6am I could see a sailboat gaining on us from the stern… a 67’ Polish racing yacht with beautiful red sails blew by us at about 8-10k as we were doing about 4. We later met up with them at the fuel dock in Gibraltar. They had a crew of 17 on board (16 guys and one girl).
Beautiful sunny arrival into Gibraltar in the afternoon… north Africa on one side and the Rock on the other. Lots of ship traffic here… smaller fishing boats as well as HUGE oil tankers from all over the world. Lots of oil storage tanks on the shore so it looks like this is a major port for oil shipments. The AIS was crazy with traffic (automatic identification system that shows us the location of boats on our plotter). We made it… sailed across the Mediterranean in crazy fall weather – no wonder we were mostly alone out there! Checked into a very nice (and cheap 22E per nite) marina just on the Spanish side of the border between Gibraltar and Spain. Much easier for us to stay in the EU and not check into Gibraltar which nominally belongs to Britain, but is kind of independent. Met up with our friends from NZ on Wild Thing who have been there for a week or so doing their own boat repairs (they ripped their mainsail in the wild Mediterranean). Our passages are always “dry” so after 5 days at sea it was time to catch up on some crushed grapes. Fun evening spent catching up with Krista & Steve and a wobbly walk back to our boat.