Anna

Tuesday 21st and our long-delayed arrival at Gibraltar ended with the tying of the warps to Pantalan 12, berth 43 at Alcaidesa Marina, La Linea, where Herbert was ready and waiting to join the crew; and had been for the past two weeks, and Anna was due to join tomorrow afternoon.

Herbert stepped off the pontoon onto the boat and settled his bags into the forward port cabin next to mine. While we set about cleaning the boat and tending to laundry. Julien took care of his cabin and ‘fresh-water’ laundry, while I headed to La Linea to look for some detergent.

I was gone for a while, searching dusty featureless streets of shuttered stores and finally found an open shop, Super Sol supermarket bucking the Siesta trend. I was hungry by then so dropped into the modestly named Okay Cafe along the Calle Real pedestrian precinct for a Tuna sandwich and Green Tea, wild character that I am. It was better than OK, it was all right and cheap too.

Returning to Pantelisa, Julian bid his farewells and joined his brother on his way to Morocco. There was only an hour before the evening dew would be settling on the decks, so my laundry was postponed until the next day. The forecast was warm and sunny: an ideal drying day. Herbert left to meet friends in La Linea for drinks and I turned in at 8pm for a deep restful sleep since I had been up 20 hours since the extended watch into Gibraltar.

9am the next morning, I crossed the entertaining border into Gibraltar and I thought I’d try out an experiment and produced my driving licence at the Gibraltar side.

“That’s a Driving licence.”
“I know, I’m Britsh.”
“But Britain is not part of the Schengen agreement”.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Certain states agreed to open their borders and ‘WE’ didn’t agree. And ‘WE’ never voted for Brexit either…”
“So Gibraltar is a part of Britain?”
“Yes, and it will be hell here at the border when Brexit kicks in in a couple of years.”
“But I’m British, why can’t I get in using my licence?”
“We are not in Schengen.”
… pauses to get passport out of bag.

I found my way out of the bright sunlight, through shade of the Landport Tunnel into to the Britishness of the Lord Nelson pub on Casemates Square and caught up on some communications and writing then went for a haircut. The barber was an English guy from Poole, telling me about the Costa del Crime up the coast towards Marbella. Still an attraction for wannabe gangsters apparently, even though the extradition protection for criminals on-the-run disappeared half a century ago.

Freshly trimmed, I explored a little around the back streets of Gibraltar and made my way back to the Nelson to finish off some notes for the blog. Anna should have landed at Malaga at 2pm, as I recall, and I messaged her to say she could meet me in Gibraltar if she liked but she replied that she was still a fair way off. I packed up at 4.30 and headed back toward the boat, instead settling in the sun’s warm rays at the skate park next to the marina. Anna was only half an hour away, so it was a good excuse to hang around and generate some vitamin D. Traveling southwest along the coast in a navy blue Skoda estate, courtesy of BlaBla car. €8 from Malaga to Gibraltar. I’d used BlaBla Car before, but only as a driver, using the company van stacked to the roof with organic fruit and veg, transporting a bemused young lady from Swindon to Bristol for about a fiver.

The language barrier between Anna and the driver made an interesting interaction, I heard later, but the driver showed her how to switch on live location in WhatsApp and she got me to do the same. You can imagine how that works. It’s like Google Maps but you can see other people’s movements who share their location. The icon roaming around the map of La Linea kept me entertained for the rest of her journey and pretty soon her icon materialised into a real person into my physical reality across the skate park.

Boarding the boat, Herbert was relaxing in the cockpit and had been there for a couple of hours but Thomas was already at the Lord Nelson with a keen hunger for fish and chips so we made our way across the border and airfield into the pub for our first introduction as a full crew of four on Pantelisa. After a fish and chip dinner and drink together, Anna and I went for a catch-up pint at Ocean Village Marina. It didn’t matter that the London Pride tasted like vinegar, the reunion was sweet enough.

I went to the Nelson for a breakfast. Getting there just before the noon deadline. The barman glanced sourly at the clock and resigned himself to accept my order. I stayed there all day updating the blog. Anna joined me later that afternoon for a couple of drinks. I closed my laptop and abandoned my work without hesitation. Good company is rarer than WiFi and more transient. These opportunities should not be missed.

Anna told me about a tapas bar that her mum recommended called “La Chiminea” and we headed over the border into La Linea for dinner recalling our adventures around Antigua and Dominica. During the big blank in my blog between March and June when I first met Anna on Skyran, her Dad’s catamaran, and we both jumped ship in Dominica to Susie’s boat “Spirited Lady of Fowey.” Somehow, all that seems a different era, especially with St Martin flattened by Hurricane Irma and claiming Glee and Dominica being flattened by Hurricane Maria. La Chiminea slowly filled with cheerful and gregarious locals generating a friendly ambience. Good food, cold beer and warm company made for a rare escape from my usual ‘table for one’ experience in cyberspace.

Anna has a cousin in Gibraltar she had never met and went to introduce herself the next day, while I trecked over to Morrisons and flip-flopped through the aisles for the victualling. There had been some action on the ‘diesel contribution’ front, while I was away. The same issue I brought up with Michael in Colombia, who said he’d speak with Toni and was awaiting a response, but remained as yet unresolved. It was near dusk when I returned and, however the diesel issue had been raised, it felt like there had been a mutiny in my absence.

Thomas messaged Toni to clarify and we nervously awaited the outcome. Claes hailed me from the pontoon gate to join him for a beer at the Marina bar. We were all meant to finish the victualling at the cheaper Mercadona in La Linea but the diesel issue presented an obstruction too large to be ignored and so was abandoned.

The verdict was in: seeing as how the time pressure had us motoring a lot more due to unfavourable winds (if any) the diesel would be paid as long as it was for the case of unfavourable winds or emergencies. That seemed fair to me I was happy since I hadn’t budgeted for the fuel. Anna and Herbert were chatting together near the shower block and I cheerfully went over to share the good news. I expected everybody would be happy with the outcome. Anna decided she still didn’t want to continue because of various other issues, and Herbert was now undecided too. We could be losing two crew in as many days. Herbert went for a solitary stroll to think things through.

With the shopping abandoned, I joined Claes for that beer. Every cloud has a silver lining. The bar was empty apart from Claes and me and we had a good catch up. I had been looking after his boat in St Martin which sank in the lagoon along with mine. Anna joined us later saying she’d probably stick around La Linea and figure out what she wanted to do. I was simultaneously disappointed she wasn’t coming and impressed that she wasn’t bailing out to just go home. Instead, she would seek out her own adventure in Andalucia.

Herbert dropped by the bar to say he was still in. I was pleased to hear that: a ray of sun in a stormy sky. Herbert is an interesting young guy easy to be around and I had a good feeling about him. We could continue as a trio but he had a candidate in mind for Anna’s replacement.

We were up at daybreak all set to sail to Lagos to avoid a storm that was heading towards us up from the Canaries. Instead of sailing through it against wind and rain, the plan was to navigate around it and catch the turn of the wind from Lagos to Gran Canaria. We would be slightly closer but also have more options on the angle of the wind.

Claes joined us and the crew for a farewell cup of tea on the back of the boat. Anna’s replacement, Jan, joined us. I said goodbye to Anna and hello to Jan. This was the first time I’d met him but Herbert knew him from mingling and dumpster diving with the hitchhikers around the dock. Pretty soon, we were off, around noon. We motored around Punto del Carnero into a healthy tailwind. We were moving through the water fast but doing only 4.5 knots over ground. The current was against us. As the wind picked up, we ‘goose-winged’ the sails, rigging the Genoa out windward on the Spinnaker pole and leaving the mainsail leeward and then sailing along at a healthy 6 knots, although Pantelisa felt twitchy wanting to constantly turn toward the following swell. With a confused sea, it made helming unpredictable although it looked promising to arrive at Lagos during daylight the very next day…