Meeting Many Rules

Marina Bay, Gibraltar

We’ve done our homework and decided.  We are not moving.  Gibraltar has the pleasure of our company until early October.  Here we will rest the Captain’s still ailing wrist and here we can hide away (legally) out of the Schengen area. 

Cloud settles over the Rock in a Levante (wind from the east)

WJ3 can roll into her next 18 month limit (or we pay VAT – at 23%...gasp, gurgle gurgle!!) and we too will have some respite from the ever-clicking 90 day Schengen limit.  (After 90 days, we can’t re-enter any Schengen country for a further 90 days).  Long term tourist visas are out of the question.  Finding non-Schengen countries close by is difficult – Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia….  Portugal is happy to extend our stay marginally, giving us time to haul out and fly home from Faro.   

And our neighbour's dog just loves fixing things - he's a Springer Spaniel, natch!

We had toyed with the idea of going to Cueta or Smir on the African coast.  Both would have to be stays in marinas anyway and they are reported to be more expensive than Gib.  Cueta is a Spanish enclave, so we would have to set the Schengen clock ticking again and Smir, a Moroccan port is a bit of an unknown (no dockage rates on the web and it’s currently Ramadan).  Duty free Gib then, gets our vote; supermarkets full of brands we know, cuts of meat we can cook, beer we can drink and a few friends to monkey around with.  So here we are, snug as two bugs in a British rug.  And yes, that’s really a roast (British) lamb you can smell in the oven.  Who knows, maybe we’ll be ordering a satellite TV dish shortly too....

Yars, this dockside business is the life for us.