After two short hops with an overnight anchoring at Lagos Bay, we reached Gibraltar or rather its Spanish counterpart, La Línea de la Concepción. We docked at Alcaidesa Marina on November 1st, 2019. The stopover there was much needed as I was waiting for my new sails to come through Gibraltar which is a VAT-free territory. This means that any shipping arriving there is not subject to VAT as would be the case in any other EU country, like Spain.
There turned out to be some issues with the UPS shipment between Turkey and Gibraltar, but eventually it got resolved, and we received a completely new set of Supermaramu sails!
While waiting for the sails to arrive, we alternated our time between some sightseeing and some minor work on the vessel.
I was able to get an extra spare set of the motor and gear to build an extra unit for the mainsail furler.
Like any other time I’ve been in La Línea de la Concepción, our main food haunts were La Bodeguiya and La Chimenea. You can never go wrong with any of these places!
Once I brought the new sails to the boat, we needed a quiet, windless time to set and hoist them up. November is well into winter time with prevailing westerlies blowing almost constantly and usually not less than 20 knots. Not good weather to hoist sails! Finally, one early morning, we caught a short break in the wind and had just enough time to hoist and furl all three sheets. Now, we were ready to get underway to Lanzarote!
On November 17th, 2019, we cast off from Alcaidesa Marina, motored west against some strong winds through the Gibraltar Strait and then turned our bow south. We were originally trying to get to Madeira but were fighting some pretty strong easterly winds and had to change course to Lanzarote.
Our passage to Lanzarote was mainly uneventful with changing weather and sometimes high winds and waves but nothing excessive. However, on the last night before arrival to Lanzarote, we had a total failure of our house batteries. It was surprising as they were only a year old, but realizing they were installed by EMEK in Turkey, that explained a lot! This issue would need to be resolved ASAP upon arriving in Marina Rubicon at Lanzarote and before we cast off for our Atlantic passage.