A Piece of the Rock

Friday April 24
Day at sea. Reading, writing but no arithmetic. Very calm seas. Saw some whales blow. Quite a few of our long time shipmates leaving at Dover in 7 days. Sniff Sniff
Saturday, April 25
Gibraltar: This British dependency is a little peninsula bounded by Spain and the sea. This little piece of turf has been a key in military activities for hundreds of years. It pretty much controls movement in and out of the Mediterranean. I took a little tour up thru miles of caves that were built to defend against a potential German invasion in WWII. A very diverse mix of cultures and religions live and work here in harmony. An airport was built with the spoils of cave building and it starts and stops at the sea’s edge with a highway bisecting the runway. Like our lift bridge to Park Point traffic is stopped when a plane takes off. Sue takes a general tour of the Rock. There are remnants of more forts than usual because of heavy pirate activity in the 18th and 19th centuries in this area. They have a state of the art desalinization plant here. We only are in port for a half day, but it’s a beautiful day full of activity. On our way out of the bay we see a small sail boat flip over. A short time later a rescue vessel shows up and we see a person bobbing in the sea with a life jacket on. He was pulled out of the water but I’m sure he had some hypothermia issues. The sea here is quite cold and he was in for quite a long time. The wind is up around 40mph so we button up our porthole as we head out into the Atlantic. The South coast of Spain is full of many wind generators. One big wind farm.