Gilbraltar

We sailed out of Mallorca early on a Thursday morning, and by nightfall were passing the next Balearic island of Ibiza without needing to stop. We were motorsailing in a light easterly breeze, and now knew we'd at least be able to make it to the nearest point on the Spanish mainland before the winds changed.

Dad's twice-daily e-mail updates on the weather said that if we sailed fast, we could make it to Gibraltar by Sunday morning, just as the wind would shift to the west once again. It was important that we make it through the Strait of Gibraltar without a west wind because we'd already be bucking several knots of east-going current, and didn't want to have to overcome a westerly wind as well.

Over the next day an increasingly large swell arose, and Dad e-mailed us to keep sailing as fast as we could; very strong 65-kilometre-an-hour winds were following right behind us. The two-, sometimes even three-metre swell rising beneath our stern and throwing us forward with roaring force as it passed under us made it clear Dad was right. On we went, rejoicing as we passed waypoint after waypoint without needing to stop, coasting along at almost 15 km/h.

By now we had plenty of wind to sail, but we kept the motor on just the same, not only to give us an extra boost of speed but just to not mess around when everything was working. We were worried about the coupling that Herbert had fixed in Mallorca with old rags, which so far was performing fine. If we stopped the coupling from turning, who knew whether things would fly apart once we tried to get it going again.

A good benefit of running the motor was unlimited electricity, so the kids had a great time taking turns on the computer and playing on an old Nintendo Playstation, a gift from their friend Blu in Sicily. Jonathan and Christopher were fascinated by a computerized historical simulation game that actually took place in Gibraltar and Spain, and kept asking questions about various historical figures that went way beyond the limits of my knowledge. Almost every afternoon there was a big game of poker. Somehow, that shifty captain of ours almost always ended up with most of the chips.

These were our last few days sailing on the Mediterranean, and we were rewarded with plenty of fine sights. In the middle of the night, in total darkness, I was adjusting the jib when I noticed that, as I grasped the jib sheet, or rope, it would emit tiny sparks of blue phosphorescent light, some of which briefly stayed, glowing, on my hands. It was like the sparkles of fairy dust from Tinkerbell's wand. As I coiled the rope around a winch and tightened it, it sparkled merrily. Obviously, some of the waves washing over the deck had left wet fingerprints behind in the form of tiny bioluminescent plankton.

Even better, though, were the dolphins. There were large pods of dolphins playing in our bow wave, day and night. In the daytime we could see them better, and laugh as they leapt and surfaced almost close enough under our bow to touch. Often they would turn on their sides, exposing white underbellies, so that they could get a good look at us as we hung laughing over the bow. It seemed that when I whistled, in approximation of their own shrill call, more of them came over to see what I was doing. Once the same eight dolphins accompanied us for nearly an hour.

Another time I was on deck at night when I heard dolphins beside us in the darkness. I heard not only the splash of their leaping and the snuffy exhalation they make when they open their breathing holes to grab a gulp of air, but I actually heard them squeaking to each other underwater. Their torpedo shapes were illuminated by bits of sparkling plankton, as if they, too, were sprinkling blue-white fairy dust behind them.

We had another visitor, an inquisitive little bird we called Beaker, with a long, curved beak. Beaker flew everywhere around the inside of the boat -- into cupboards, the dark, cluttered ends of boys' beds, behind doors, onto bookshelves -- just checking to see if we were good housekeepers, I guess. For hours he kept us entertained, and the boys had to be careful not to injure him when he flew around them and landed on their beds as they read. Later, he flew outside and kept watch from a spot on the main boom.

Beaker checking the maps

On and on we sailed, with Dad giving us weather updates two or three times a day by satellite e-mail. Every 10 minutes we logged a mile, each mile a mini triumph, a mile that brought us closer to the end of the Mediterranean Sea. We passed the Greenwich meridian, the first line of longitude that marks the beginning of our scale for mapping the planet. We watched the last minutes of east longitude count down on the GPS, and all cheered as it briefly flashed zero degrees east, before beginning to count up again, now in increments west. We were in the Western Hemisphere again, which we had left more than two years ago in waters off Tonga.

Now we were heading into the bottleneck of the Mediterranean where Africa and Europe reach for each other like pincers. By now a strong opposing current had set in, cold water from the Atlantic pouring into the Mediterranean to replace water evaporating at the hot eastern end around Egypt. Our GPS showed us making nearly four kilometres an hour less speed over the ground than our knot meter was indicating we were making through the water.

Herbert's underwear repair.

During our third and last night at sea, the motor began vibrating strangely, the first indication that Herbert's MacGyver-like repair was giving out. This was the worst possible time for it to fail, because we were surrounded by huge container ships and supertankers, the wind had died and we needed our motor badly.

All night we'd been debating whether it was best to stop and investigate the vibration, or whether stopping would just make the situation worse. In the darkness, anchoring was no longer easy, and drifting around disabled in shipping lanes not the brightest idea either. Plus it was quite possible Herbert's underwear repair might yet hold out. And so we'd just kept going, praying the remains of the damaged coupling wouldn't completely fly apart.

Herbert went to bed at 6 p.m., when Jonathan took over his watch. But he just couldn't sleep, even though he was dog-tired, having been awake on the graveyard shift the night before. I came on duty at 7, and at 10 our fretful captain still was tossing and turning, popping up his head every time I tip-toed in to sneak some chocolates from the treats drawer under the bed. "As soon as I put my arm over my head, it hits the wall and it feels that new vibration," he complained. "I just can't sleep."

I spent a restless watch too, dodging huge oil tankers and cargo ships in the increasingly narrow strait. The lights of Spain were dancing brightly along our starboard side as we passed Malaga and the Costa del Sol, about 15 kilometres offshore. In daytime we would have seen broad, sandy beaches and resort hotels; at night it was all twinkling lights. Before sunset we also could clearly see the mountains of Morocco, but as dusk passed into night there were no lights to see on African side, only those of the huge ships that were now passing us increasingly closely. Some passed near enough, at triple and quadruple our speed, that we could hear the throb of their mighty engines and would be tossed around wildly in their wake.

At 2 a.m. I went to rouse Herbert, who was at last asleep. When I touched him on the arm, he was instantly awake, a look of alarm on his face. No, nothing was wrong; it was just my turn to sleep. It was also my turn to fret. I could see what he meant; from our bed, the unfamiliar sound and feel of the vibration in the shaft was unmistakable. I, too, had trouble falling asleep as I worried about a breakdown. But eventually I did doze off.

I woke up again with a start at 6 a.m. Herbert had sharply reduced the throttle, and that's a signal for me to get to the cockpit, quickly. I bolted up. In fact, Herbert hadn't been calling me at all; he had only been trying to avoid a container ship that was turning in front of us.

But at the moment I emerged into the cockpit, all thoughts of engine failure were banished. For there, right in front of us, loomed an unmistakable shape -- large, even blacker than the black expanse of sky behind it, and unbelievably grand. The ancients knew this as one of the Pillars of Hercules. It was the Rock of Gibraltar. It was exactly that typical profile of the Rock you see on Prudential Insurance commercials. We had made it.

We motored slowly around the Rock into the bay, waiting for the sun to rise. Around us, big ships were anchoring, taking on pilots, docking, refuelling. The rattle of a cargo ship's descending anchor chain sounded like thunder as we passed close by. But I couldn't take my gaze off that magnificent rock, commanding the Strait of Gibraltar and thus the entire Mediterranean Sea. No wonder empires throughout history have battled over it!

Gibraltar is a small chunk of land -- truly not much more than that giant jagged hunk of Jurassic rock -- on the tip of a peninsula, completely surrounded by Spain. The Rock has been the subject of dispute for 1,500 years, in the early times mostly between the Moors from North Africa and the Spanish. In 1713, however, the Spanish ceded Gibraltar to England in perpetuity. It was a move they regretted almost instantly, and sought to undo with a series of bloody sieges. The Great Siege of 1779 lasted four years and was the last attempt by the Spanish to retake the Rock by force.

Although Gibraltar has remained in British hands for almost 300 years, Spain is still upset about it. In 1969, Spain tried a new kind of siege, closing its border to Gibraltar and cutting off all other means of direct communication. Until Spain entered the European Union 16 years later, with an open border one of the conditions of her entry, Gibraltar had no land access at all. If a Gibraltarian wanted to go to Spain, he had to take a ferry across the strait to Morocco, and then another ferry back to Spain. A trip of a few minutes on foot would thus take a whole day of travel by sea, maybe more.

So the mighty Rock, standing vigil at the intersection of two continents, a sea and an ocean, has seen many conflicts over the years. Now, at least, we were here, and about to begin the very last chapter in the story of our voyage around the world.