We made it across the Straits of Gibraltar just fine yesterday and into Ceuta. Even though it was Saturday there was still quite a bit of ship traffic in the Straits. We had to keep a pretty sharp eye out for traffic the whole crossing. We ran into a large pod of 100+ dolphin playing around near the entrance of the Gibraltar Harbor. We saw one baby and mother playing around. The baby dolphin looked like it was having a great time. I got some video of them but it's not real clear what was happening.
Ceuta is what is known as a Spanish enclave, it is a territory of Spain situated on a peninsula of Morocco. People here speak Spanish as the primary language. English does not seem to be a particularly popular second language. We had some communications challenges when we arrived and were fueling up. The station attendant was very happy to see us and quite talkative. One of the first things he wanted to clarify for us was that we were in Europa, not Africa. The bigger questions on our minds were "Do you have diesel fuel"? and "Do you have a slip for the night?". After lots of pointing and explaining we figured out that we could just select an open slip. We figured wrong. Just as we were securing ourselves in our self-selected slip another gentleman came by on a jet-ski and told us no-no, over there - pointing to another location. That was the practice mooring. We selected another location and slid right in.
We got ourselves all secured in the slip "Mediterranean style". At marinas in the Med the boats are pulled into slips either bow or stern first instead of to the side as is normally done in the States. This allows many more boats to fit in a smaller space. It can also make it challenging to get on and off the boat if it is not a floating dock. The Ceuta marina has a floating dock and we are stern-in so it is easy to get on and off because the boat and the dock are always at the same level no matter what stage the tide is. In Gibraltar, we were bow-in and it was not a floating dock. As the tide went up and down there was a variation of 3-4 feet between the bow of the boat and the dock. We were also 3-4 feet away from the dock.
Most boats that stay in and around the Med have some form of extending ramp or board to make a gangplank (passarelles) for getting on and off the boat. Fortunately, Don thought to bring a long board along for this purpose. We just had to get it rigged up somehow to make a ramp that would work in various tide conditions. We tried a couple of iterations and I think our design still needs some improvements. I am not know for my grace and balance. I personally found the best solution for getting on and off the boat was to hop over to our neighbor Alan's boat and use his ramp. Alan is a great guy and did not mind at all. I also learned a little bit more about cricket from him.
As Charlie was removing the P-lines from the stern, three ladies came by the the boat. They hopped down onto the floating dock and were quite excited to see the American flag on the back of Koinonia. One of them got out her camera and wanted to get Charlie to take a picture with it. They did not speak and English and our Spanish is still "developing" so it took a bit of pointing and guessing to get the picture framed just right. As it turns out, they wanted to be ON the boat for the picture, right by the flag. These were not what one would call "agile" ladies and I was a bit concerned about them jumping the gap from the dock to the boat. Everyone made it over just fine and there was lots of laughing, giggling, flag-touching and peace signs during the photo shoot. We were able to determine that the child of one of the ladies was attending school in New York which may have been the reason for the excitement with the flag. It was a fun experience.
