We are happy to report that today was sunny with calm winds. The marina is calmer, which is nice. We like calm days.

Eric went to the marina office as soon as it opened, where a Spanish speaker was on duty and happy to help. Yay. He called and found out that the distributor did carry the part, but absolutely would not sell to us direct. We had to go through a retail store, and they didn’t volunteer any information as to what store we might be able to find their product in. Our nice translator didn’t seem to want to call back to press them on the retail store locations.

Yesterday, the clerk at the Gibraltar chandlery suggested that we go to a nearby chandlery in Spain, just a 15 minute away, and ask them to order it for us. They would be able to get it sent from Barcelona via overnight express with no customs issues. Now that we knew the distributor had the part in stock, we were happy to make the trip. We got directions, which were go out to the road, turn left, walk over the airstrip and you are at the border. Catch a taxi to the chandlery on the other side. We were kind of dubious, but the directions were accurate. You really do walk across the airstrip. Or drive across, if you are in a car. When a plane needs to land or take off, they just close the road for a few minutes. Seeing the wide open strip explains why the other day, we heard several announcements over a loudspeaker demanding that the car parked on the runway be moved now.

One more block from the runway is the border. Crossing the border was shockingly easy. The guard glanced at our passports and made sure we were stamped into the EU, then waved us through. The whole walk took a total of ten minutes.

The border crossing reminds us a little bit of the Tijuana border in that there is little traffic going into Spain and a line of cars as far as the eye can see going into Gibraltar. This is because 4,000 – 5,000 people commute from Spain to Gibraltar for work every day. Gibraltar claims to have zero unemployment, and Spain’s unemployment rate is 9%. Housing in Spain is significantly cheaper than Gibraltar, which is why so many people commute.

Like Tijuana, there is a line of taxis waiting at the border. We hopped in and gave him the paper with the name of the chandlery. It was a longer drive than we anticipated, a good 10 minutes. From what little we saw, this is a newer area, and it looks to be primarily industrial with some large, low end residential complexes. We caught some nice views of the rock and the ocean on the drive.

We asked the taxi driver to wait and went into the chandlery. The owner told us multiple times in Spanish and broken English that he doesn’t work with Shurflo and he won’t order it for us, period. We gave him the number to the dealer in Barcelona and begged, but he refused. He had no interest in dealing with Shurflo in any capacity. He said there were no more chandleries in the area. Argh! The cab took us back. The border patrol agents barely glanced at our passports when we came in, just looked at the USA cover and waved us through.

Forty five minutes later, we were back at our marina. We asked at the office if there were any more chandleries around. The only one they knew of was on the other side of the bay. They had no phone number for it, and it would be a $60 – $75 USD cab ride to go and check in person. It was clear that they were getting tired of helping us, which is understandable. They certainly have work to do and can’t keep spending a lot of time playing translator on the phone for us.

Eric hopped on the internet and found the number to another place in Spain that was viable for us to get the pump from. They, fortunately, had an English speaker who told us they don’t work with Shurflo and would not order it for us.

Frustrated, Eric sent an email to the manufacturer asking them to find us a suitable retail vendor in Spain as close to Gibraltar as possible. Our belief is that they should know who stocks their product and should be happy to volunteer the information. We find it ludicrous that they expect us to spend a zillion hours locating and calling chandleries in Spain (and a zillion dollars in international phone bills) until we find the right one, especially when we don’t speak enough Spanish to carry on a phone conversation.

Meanwhile, Christi finished washing the boat. She noticed a huge gash in the side of Kosmopolitan that we must have gotten in Stromboli. We were so distracted by everything else that we hadn’t noticed at the time. It will have to be fixed before we can use it again. Just not what we needed today.

There has been a bad smell in the boat ever since we started our passage to Gibraltar. Eric cleaned out the bilge and quickly found the culprit — an oil soaked diaper. He got rid of the rag and washed the bilge out. Hopefully that problem is solved.

We decided to do some major re-organizing in preparation for the Atlantic crossing. We often complain that re-organizing seems to be a never ending, unrewarding project. We have to admit that overall it was a good day, but the anxiety over the water pump has put an ugly cloud over our perspective.