03 October 2015; Gibraltar, British Territories.

Gibraltar is only a short hop away from Huelva and therefore the captain decided on a slightly earlier arrival. If the sailing speed between two ports is very low then you either have to float, go to anchor or run on one engine to maintain the schedule. Anchoring and floating is not much of an option, as wherever you go in this area, you are in somebodies territorial waters or you are in somebodies way. Very slow speed is not good for an engine, it gets dirty and uses more fuel and with our diesel electric setup running on one engine is not so easy for the system. So if you arrive a bit earlier then the average speed goes up and you can find a better engine configuration. And the guests do not mind it either…… more time to spend ashore.

Sailing through the VTSS under Gibraltar. All the yellow dots are ships.

Getting to the place itself is more of an effort, especially when coming from the West. To avoid accidents again the area is regulated by means of Vessel Traffic Lanes. Coming into the Med. You are in the south lane sailing north of the African continent. Gibraltar is in Europe thus at a certain moment you have to cross the north lane, south of the rock (leading traffic out of the Med) and then enter the bay next to the rock. This morning we were quite lucky. Only a few slow tankers around us but a large gap in the west bound traffic and thus the ms Rotterdam could just slip through without having to slow down or take any other avoidance actions.

With Gibraltar we are in the peculiar situation that the Spanish are convinced that the rock belongs to them and there are squabbles over it on a regular basis. Still the cruise business does not notice it very much as we happily sailed from Huelva to Gib and tonight from Gib to Malaga.

Although Gibraltar is not much more than the Rock and a small bit of land around it, it has a very thriving harbor. There are the docks to support the place itself but also dry – dock and repair facilities for ships, there is a lot of bunker activity going on and various cargo ships call for crew change and provisioning. Then there are the regular calls of the large super yachts. That might not seem so important but they generate a lot of income for the port as they always require a prime spot in the harbor and that means prime docking fees. Today we had a blue one and a white one coming in but they were too far away to read the names. But both were very big, more like small cruise ships.

Gibraltar from the air. the cruise ship dock is at the far right, where the white (cruise) ship is docked. (Photo courtesy Gibraltar Port authority)

The main reason for Gibraltar being so popular with the shipping world is its location. Just inside the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea it is the ideal place for stocking up before a crossing or to stock up again after a crossing while going further afield. Then there is a 3^rd reason and that is for ships to use the sheltered anchorage while they wait for orders and take in fuel oil at the same time. All in all it is a busy place and I spoke to one gentleman today, who was staying in his deck chair near the railing –all day- as he found there was more to see through binoculars than there was to see when going ashore. His (British) wife had gone ashore to visit the local supermarket which is operated by a very British chain called Morrisons. Makes for a happy marriage I suppose. I know they will make lots of extra money today as the crew was descending in force upon the shop.  It even got my trainee’s excited and it also made them be in a hurry as they wanted both to go to the supermarket and to the top of Rock. I just warned them about the monkeys. When I was here last time one of our guests with beautiful long blond hair, got a monkey on her back and did not enjoy the experience. Guess what the monkey was doing.

We will sail tonight at 11 pm. and then just go around the corner to Malaga where we are going to be docking at 0700 hrs. Weather is supposed to get a bit more cloudy and windy, but I think for tomorrow and the day after we are still going to be ok.