Yesterday, however, was our day to deal with all the officialdom of clearing out of Spain and, particularly, the European Union. Of course, as expected, after walking the kilometre to the Policia Nacional office, we didn’t have the one piece of paper they wanted, although our Customs and Immigration folder was full of every other piece of official paper you could think of, collated, as each port of call requested something additional during our transit through the European Union, including receipts from every marina we stopped at, which we understand, indicated the Light Dues we’ve paid along the way.
That meant, while Elaine sat at the police station, Roy returned to the marina office to get this particular piece of paper needed, a 4 Km round walk for him. It was long past midday by the time he returned, while Elaine had seen hundreds of police officers come and go, mostly arriving, though.
While it’s well documented that the process associated with clearing in to the European Union for the first time via Spain, is a fiasco, the clearing out process was as well. After Roy returned with the extra piece of paper, the officer entered it into their computer system and handed the paper back to us; no stamp, no Zarpe, nothing, and questioning this didn’t make an ounce of difference; we left without any documentation indicating that we had cleared out! Let’s hope that extra piece of paper does the trick when we clear in to Gibraltar!
From there we walked to Aqa Restaurant and Lounge Bar, close to the waterfront on the Atlantic Ocean side, which we’d visited once before, and enjoyed a coffee and baked delight. It’s a good thing we’re only eating two meals a day, though, with the months of baked delights we’ve consumed daily.
Back onboard Elaine brought the catalogue of our latest blogs up to date, following which we enjoyed a nice long chat to Keenan, who was back home, but had the house more or less to himself, since Brooke was napping and all the grandchildren were at school. That gave him plenty of time to show us the progress of all the building work being undertaken in their backyard; can’t wait to see it finished. Afterwards we completed the few preparations needed to move Paw Paw to Gibraltar today.
With sunrise around 0730, we set the alarm for 0800, had breakfast and cast off just in time for the fuel dock on the Gibraltar side to open.
By 1030, we’d filled up on diesel and petrol and Elaine had manoeuvred Paw Paw successfully into the most awkward berth ever at Queensway Marina, but we couldn’t have gotten closer to the Waterfront Restaurant and Bar if we’d tried. We were literally able to chat to folks on the pier, who were having a bite to eat at the restaurant, while we stood on deck.
Once settled and cleared in, we lowered our quarantine flag and walked the very short distance to the Waterfront Restaurant and Bar for a coffee and baked delight. Turns out that the obscure piece of paper the Spanish authorities wanted, was, in fact, not needed at all to clear in to Gibraltar; everything Elaine had completed online was sufficient. We were also delighted to discover that Queensway Marina was a quiet, peaceful and clean oasis away from the madding crowd.
Feeling like we both needed a nap by this stage, however, we crawled into our beds, but sleep eluded us. Giving up, Elaine relaxed onboard, while Roy went for a walk, although we both felt a sense of relief that we were eventually berthed in Queensway Marina, a reservation we’d made a year ago and that our next stop was Ireland, before commencing our Atlantic Ocean crossing. We were definitely looking forward to time with the family. It was hard to believe that fourteen months had slipped away, since last seeing everyone in Ireland.
Roy returned with a shopping bag full of goodies again, much to Elaine’s delight. Fortunately dinner was a light affair to try keep the calories under control. Definitely going to have to pace ourselves moving forward!
