Guernsey's Old Postbox

This postbox No1, still in everyday use, dating from 1852 and situated in Union St. St. Peter Port, is supposed to be the first one in Britain and therefore the oldest in the world (as the world's first recognised prepaid postage stamps were issued in Britain around 1840).
There were probably other "boxes" all over the place into which mail was put but this is the first one that was used as a postbox for stamped mail and for a mailing system that has essentially remained the same all over the world to this day.

Where did the name Guernsey come from?

No one seems to know with any certainty where or when the word Guernsey originated, or Jersey for that matter, though we all know where New Jersey comes from! And Sarnia too, that we all believed for a long time was the Roman name for the island, seems to have been their name for Sark…possibly. Few people who live in the town of Sarnia, Ontario realise where their town name originated, though the links to Guernsey through Major General Isaac Brock are obvious. And now it appears that our island was originally called Lisia. I like this word… thought it might be a good name for my first grand daughter who is yet to be conceived, as I write! I Googled it and found nothing of note but since Charles Parkinson’s (C. Northcote Parkinson’s son) book “Lisia” has just been published, I’m expecting more Googlable entries sometime soon. Charles Parkinson puts forward the theory that Guernsey may have been Vorti"gern"'s island. This could very well be true but my explanation below is the one that I thought most plausible and until I've read "Lisia" it's still my favourite!

Guernsey is the name that the island acquired at some point after the Romans left and before we were part of the conquering force of William of Normandy in 1066. Many people believe that the name meant “green island” and it is true that “ey” is a common ending meaning island that comes from Old Norse but I can’t find any resemblance between any Nordic word for green and “guern”. Rollo the Viking, from the early 10^th century (and his predecessors) who gained Normandy from the Franks, brought the Nordic language with him and many of our local place names and common words have indisputable links to Old Norse, such as Variouf, meaning werewolf and vraic, meaning seaweed.

So, “Guern” is quite possibly derived from a Nordic word and there is a word in Old Norse, “horn” that means corner. This word is essentially the same nowadays in Norwegian (hjorne), Swedish (horna) and Danish (hjorne). It would make some sort of sense that ancient seafarers would name islands after something that was recognisable and Guernsey certainly does have two definable corners on its south coast, at both the western and eastern ends. St Martin’s Point is almost a perfect right angle and, coming in from the WSW from Brittany’s NW extremity (Ushant), this is the logical route for anyone wishing to head North towards Britain and NW Europe, via sheltered parts of the coast. I can imagine a mariner being given sailing directions to Guernsey….”Head west leaving the coast of France just out of sight on your right until you see the island with the corners and turn left there at the second corner. A mile or so up the coast is a sheltered spot where you can stay”. This place is now our main port, St Peter Port. I have done this trip many, many times and I know what a relief it is in bad weather to turn almost 90deg to port, after getting into the white sector of the light at St Martin’s Point, knowing that you will be able to anchor safely in less than an hour. Using the word corner would also be used if a ship arrived from the east, as you would still have to turn, this time to starboard, after the islands of Sark and Herm (and their outlying rocks) are cleared.

I rather like this explanation (I found parts of it on an obscure website a few years ago that I have now lost) for the origin of our island name.

Now I come to the contentious use of the word guernsey and its derivatives, for that woolly jumper that we all know and generally love or hate in equal measure….!

There has been an awful lot of heated debate on whether the word “gansey” comes from Guernsey or whether it comes from the Gaelic geansaidh, or the modern Norwegian word for sweater, “genser”. I have come to believe that they are all related but not necessarily  in the way most people might now read on the internet.

I have spent far too much time in recent weeks googling any and every site I could find, as well as reading umpteen lengthy forum posts on my favourite knitting site, Ravelry which has thousands of keen guernsey/gansey knitters all over the world. I also spoke at some length with our island’s foremost authority on Guernsey costume, Gillian Lenfesty. So, here, eventually is my maybe not so woolly theory.

Starting at some sort of beginning of Guernsey’s knitting history… the island has most certainly been a very important staging post for seafarers ever since any sort of sea trade began between S Europe, the Med and the N European countries. The small ships, vulnerable to bad weather, would shelter at any suitable place en route and Guernsey is perfectly situated for such a stop,  its natural harbour on the east coast, just a reasonable day’s sail from Ushant to the WSW, the south coast of the UK to the north, or Normandy to the NW. It’s also highly probable that there was a fair bit of trade, both imports and exports, over the centuries and it’s well documented that the craft of knitting also arrived in the island from Europe, at some point in the 14^th century.

Guernseyfolk have always been resourceful. As a small island, dependent on the outside world for much of our needs, we have to be. We certainly have our place in history, not all of it as well known as it jolly well ought to be! For instance, did you know that we were once (in the mid 19^th century), the world’s largest producer of marmalade? Keiller, Dundee had a factory here. It was all to do, yet again, with some very silly tax laws in the UK where sugar was taxed, but not goods produced from sugar, like…marmalade. After a while, the UK government saw sense and changed the law. That particular industry in Guernsey then declined but the island still abounds with old ceramic jamjars bearing the name of Keiller.  Anyway, ever resourceful, we turned our sugar cooking skills to sweetmaking.  We also have the world’s first postbox, but these are not being further discussed here!

So, for sure, we had a very well established knitting tradition by the 15^th century, both Guernsey and Jersey producing fine items, notably elaborately patterned stockings. These were knitted in the round on four or five fine needles and were worn by the nobility of Europe, royalty even. Raw fleeces were imported, as we had few sheep, then spun and dyed locally. Guernsey knitting was generally in one colour (indigo) and fairly coarse, whereas Jersey produced finer items using more colours. Mary, Queen of Scots was wearing stockings knitted in “Jerzie” when she went to the scaffold.  Around this time, knitted goods from Guernsey that were a present from  Leonard Chamberlain, Governor of Guernsey, to the monarchy, included stockings and wastcotes, among other items. A wastcote in those days referred to a short, long sleeved, tight fitting garment, not the waistcoat as we know it today. This is all well documented.

The market for fine knitted woollen items went out of fashion around the end of the 17^th century, after more than 300 years, when silk became the preferred choice of the nobility of Europe. The Channel Islanders however, continued to produce finely knitted garments, called wastcotes in England, for the working men on land and sea. There are numerous references, dating from 1629 (Heylin), to the particular type of knitted garment worn by the menfolk of Guernsey. Another reference,  by a travel writer from 1838 (Mudie), notes that the Islandfolk produced a type of coarse woollen knitted fabric that is worn by “sailors in seaports in most parts of the world”. It is clear from this that this type of knitted jumper was already very well known and widely spread  by this time and it is also reasonable to suggest that the influence was spread by seafarers who are far more likely to travel. Farmers tended to stay more or less put!

Now, I have come to the conclusion that these garments didn’t have a special name at the time. Why would they? But, and I’m no etymologist, it is suspected that somewhere along the line, someone, in some seaport somewhere, asked a Guernseyman what he was wearing. With the obvious language difficulties, because our locals generally only spoke Patois at the time, (a Norman French dialect), it is reasonable to suppose that this man would have used the word Guernsey as an answer, not exactly to describe what he was wearing but just to explain where he came from. I can just imagine some foreigner asking me something I couldn’t understand at all and my response would be to put my hand on my chest and say “Guernsey”. How he pronounced the word, I don’t know but if he said it to a Cornishman for example, then it may very well have been repeated as “garnsey”. Cornwall is practically next door to Guernsey, well around 75 miles away, so our seafolk had been trading for centuries.

Cornwall as a source for guernsey knitting is without dispute. Some of their intricate patterns are also found in the ancient family patterns that existed on our own west coast of Guernsey. It is entirely possible that a guernsey was exchanged or given as a gift or maybe a Guernsey fisherman married a Cornish girl? Whatever it was, it happened a long time ago and nobody wrote it down. Why would they?

Now the Cornish fishermen also fished and traded around the coasts of Britain and Ireland. Just a thought, but if a Cornishman pronounced his wonderful garment as “garnsey” and then turned up in a NE port of the UK, the locals there may well have turned it into “gansey” (How do southerners pronounce bath, compared with northeners?). Guernsey also had very strong trade links with the East coast of the UK (actually around most of the coast as well as across the Atlantic) and our seafarers wore their woollen wastcotes wherever they were so it’s equally possible that the language problem caused the folk of, for example, Yorkshire to think that pointing at your chest and saying Guernsey was also the name for your clothes. Who knows how the exchanges went? Again, nothing was written down. Guernsey ships were regularly visiting the NE ports, from 1780 at least, to load coal for use in the new, efficient brick fireplaces that had replaced the old “walk in” hearths, but this is an aside...

What we do know is that a distinctive type of finely knitted, dark navy, upper body garment, knitted in a very similar style, commonly  began to appear, from sometime early in the 19^th century, in many ports around the British Isles and beyond and that this garment was called a garnsey, gansey, ganzy or geansaidh (Gaelic).  It’s inconceivable that all these names, so similarly pronounced,  miraculously appeared, scattered around thousands of miles of coastline, at roughly the same time. Wouldn’t it make more sense that the name originated from just one place? Note that I haven’t said that we called the garment a guernsey at this time and I don’t think we did. I think the name “guernsey” came along rather later…possibly around 1851, when it first appears according to the OED and when the type of garment was well established in coastal areas all around the British Isles, each with its own evolved pattern and version of the name though many of the patterns are very similar to some of the original Guernsey family designs.

On a note that I touched on at the beginning of this piece, I have read that Northerners believe the word gansey comes from the Norwegian word for tunic. The word for tunic in all the Scandinavian languages, as well as in Old Norse is actually close to kirtle and a jumper is "trollja" or similar. Genser is only seen in Norway and it means sweater. Sweater is a relatively new word that was given to a garment worn by rowers in the late 19^th century. I can’t find a name for sweater anywhere else in Scandinavia. I believe that the Norwegians (great deep sea fishermen) called their garments after the geansaidh or gansey, not the other way round. And so with genser now appearing in Norway, the word Guernsey has just possibly further evolved and arrived back in the part of the world that it originated, but with a totally different meaning. Funny isn’t it?

 

*Many thanks must go to Gillian Lenfesty curator of the Guernsey Costume Museum at the National Trust of Guernsey for her permission to use many of the historical facts in this piece. She respectfully requests that they not be further reproduced without her permission.

 

 

Happy Feet? Knitting Alan Dart's Frog Prince's feet.

The picture above shows the foot after the first row of the toe shaping. The next action will be to turn and purl the 10 pink stitches.  The first toe is knitted (stocking st) from the 10 pink marked stitches.

 Break off the wool and thread it through the 10 stitches then sew the inside seam of the toe as below. Rejoin the wool at the first green stitch on the left hand needle below.

 The second toe is knitted from the 9 stitches marked green with an Inc1 as written in the pattern to give 10st as below. In the picture below, the next action will be to purl straight across all 10 green stitches while keeping the first toe out of the way.

 These 10 stitches are knitted (stocking st) for 11 rows then seamed like the first toe. In the picture below, the next action is to rejoin the yarn and knit the final 5 stitches on the left hand needle, then turn and purl across all 10 stitches.

 The third toe is completed by stocking st 12 rows which means ending on a knit row to make all three toes the same length. Then break wool, thread through 10 stitches and sew down edge seam of foot. Finish and stuff as given in the pattern instructions.

 I think that nearly all of Alan Dart's characters and animals with individual fingers and/or toes can be knitted using the same technique but I would suggest not breaking the yarn each time a finger/toe is completed. Instead, a suitably long length of yarn (enough to knit and seam all of the remaining fingers) can be threaded onto a sewing needle and used for each seam. The threaded yarn will then be in the correct place to knit the next finger etc.

I hope this is clear enough to understand.

Things not to hit at sea.

A slightly smaller hazard but horrible to encounter...no lights and quite often no flag either. hit one at your peril...

Cape St Vincent. It was windy here......I'm amazed I got this one horizontal.

Ponta Sagres, the sheltered bay just before Cape St Vincent that is the extreme SW point of Europe.....just around the corner from here and where the wind can be expected to increase just a little.........

Tarifa lighthouse that is the Southern point of Europe...not Gibraltar as they like to claim. It's always incredibly windy here and there is a high suicide rate as a result. We didn't hang around for long..

Trying to get out of the Med!

La Linea, really is right next door to Gib…it takes about 5 minutes to walk to the border. I had been strongly advised by a helpful cruiser in Cartagena for us not to go to Marina Bay, Gib as it would be very expensive and snobbish. La Linea was soooooooooo much nicer, she had said, and so it was. We walked across the border without any problems on two occasions, once for the tourist thing (one and a half hours in a minibus to do the Rock, the caves, the museums and the apes) and once to get the duty free ( a couple of electrical items and some binoculars)…….cunningly smuggled back across the border disguised as second hand. So that was Gibraltar……… done!

La Linea was obviously meant to be a huge development but I think they have suffered from the current Spanish economic situation and so finishing the building of facilities etc  is on hold. Pity. There are many liveaboards here as it is a very cheap place to stay….only 10 Euros a night through the winter months. The marina has become a home to one small dolphin that had recently appeared with two others who then left him alone….I wondered if there was something wrong with him but the marina staff said he had been given the OK by a conservation group. There were certainly plenty of fish around for him to feed on.

We stayed a couple of extra days here waiting and hoping for suitable winds to get us through the Straits without hassle and in the end, we left when the winds died down to a comfortable westerly force 3, meaning a bit of a slog but still better than crashing into the usual force 6 headwinds which would have been impossible to circumvent. There is a constant current through the Straits as the Atlantic rushes in to replace water lost from the Med by evaporation. So, with unrelenting headwinds and a current to battle against, leaving the Med is quite an effort!

It eventually took us nearly 24 hours to get through the Straits, past Cape Trafalgar (which was unfortunately rather uninteresting to look at or to photograph) and on around to Cadiz. On occasion, our speed dropped to less than one knot over the ground though we were making over four knots through the water. That means having to push through three knots pushing against you of wind and current (for the less nautically inclined) and, if your speed was three knots through the water, you wouldn’t be going anywhere at all!

Cadiz is a lovely place, suffering from some neglect which is a pity, but a very interesting place to see nevertheless, full of history. I read somewhere that it may well be the oldest city in Europe so that’s some claim to fame. The city of Jerez is only 10 miles (or it may be kilometres) away, a must see for me because of the Spanish Riding School there. We were stuck there until the NE Portuguese trades subsided a little so that we could tackle the notorious Cape St Vincent. ……..but weather forecasts change rapidly around these parts…… Hmmm.

We had a day out in Jerez de la Frontera, going via train, very clean and cheap. The riding school was a real treat for me. I could have stayed for hours watching the horses training. If we’d gone the next day, we could have seen the “show” but I think it was far more interesting for me, as a horse lover, to watch them going through their paces……the young inexperienced ones were fascinating to watch especially as they tried to carry out the more complicated manoeuvres…….the capriole for example. It was also the first time I have seen the “Spanish Step”….amazing….and they really stamp hard!!

In the end, we decided to chance it because if we dithered any more, we might never leave at all. So we set off for a two night trip to Lisbon, about 250 miles in all, half of them more or less west and the rest more or less north, rounding the bottom left hand corner of  conveniently square Iberia.

We made some good progress until part way through the night when the tide/current/wind turned against us and we struggled at times to make 1 knot. Cape St Vincent was therefore a complete no no until the weather improved. We ended up battling 35 knot headwinds ( Force 7) and a horrible lumpy sea to get into Portimao, a hopefully sheltered spot and under 10 miles away from Cape St Vincent,  before nightfall. The nicest part of this leg was a spectacular show of dozens of common dolphins feeding, about half a mile away (their prey, probably tuna, leap right out of the water to try to escape). These dolphins then turned towards us and spent the next half an hour or so playing around the bow. I got a nice little video with my camera of their antics. Later that evening when I had just fallen asleep before my watch in four hours time, I was suddenly woken by something landing on my shoulder. It was a swallow that was flying around inside and outside the boat, trying to find a landing spot. The poor thing eventually settled in a corner as it got dark and went to sleep but it died during the night. It must have been exhausted, possibly blown off course by last week’s strong winds. I always hope they will make it safely but I suppose dying in one’s sleep is a better way to go than drowning.

Portimao is a tourist spot on the Algarve so it’s pretty and clean but getting into the marina was more than a little tricky as we came up the river early in the evening towards it with the full force of the Nortada blasting us at 30knots plus, when this wind is usually at its strongest…..I have since learnt all about this NW wind that builds up most days off the Portuguese coast, caused by warm air rising rapidly over the land that heats up in the morning and most common during June and July. Aha…….just as we are trying to sail up this coast…..Hmm. It quickly produces a NW and therefore coldish blast from the sea that frequently gets up to Force 7. We were driven strongly onto the fuel berth by it, where we spent the night….no chance of getting off till peaceful conditions resumed the next morning. Luckily they didn’t charge for this  because the marina berths here are very expensive and one night’s fees were enough especially as the simple meal we had ashore that offered roast lamb at 9 Euros & a bottle of local red at 10 produced a bill of nearly 50 Euros……..Their equivalent of VAT turned out to be 23%. Ouch! Enough of Portimao. Time to move on……..

So now we started to expect the daily Nortada blast and had to plan a strategy to get us around Ponta de Sagres (Where Henry the Navigator used to “hang out”) and then the ever so slightly more notorious Cape St Vincent which so many sailing ships of old have failed to circumnavigate successfully…….no engines you see! This Cape which almost makes a right angle on the smaller scale charts is the most SW point of Europe and therefore has a sort of romantic air about it…….there aren’t many spots like this…….Cape Horn is another of course.  I digress……………….. We got to Ponta de Sagres in a dayhop and then spent two days at anchor waiting for a quiet moment, via the just ever so unreliable weather forecasts, in which to leave. This came very early one morning as expected and we set off, motorsailing with determination. Cape St Vincent was only a couple of miles away & could surely be conquered easily but would we be able to find somewhere suitable to anchor for the night once around the corner? The wind and the current might mean we could only make a couple of knots once the Nortada set in and this part of the coast is mostly barren cliff face. Well, we eventually rounded the Cape quite easily and I got a good photo or two to prove it, then, we did make an anchorage at Arrifana some way up the W coast which I rather liked because the exposed rocks were delightfully contorted geologically (Africa ”crashing” into Eurasia a few years ago) but, we rocked and rolled here all night as the Atlantic swells blasted in and I read that the beach here can be a Mecca for surfers…….. One night was definitely enough and another very early start was needed to get to Lisbon…………..

Odd photo or two

Gibraltar as we saw it emerging from the haze. The weather got better!

The bullring at Ronda. It's a lovely place but every bit as hot as the last time I visited. The bus journey there and back is incredible....worth it just for that. I took a video but don't know how it would post here.

An ape with attitude. They all seemed to be quite approachable.....but I still didn't have a go apart from giving an old female a drink of water from my ever handy bottle. I know how she must have felt!

Cartagena was full of statues like this, some of them in the middle of the street, sitting on park benches etc Could be a little alarming if one was slightly enebriated on a dark night and one just sort of bumped into one? This is Jackie (Blue Banana) and Dick btw.

After eight months ashore, doing just enough of the money earning flagmaking and an awful lot of knitting (this was necessary for the soul), I came to the conclusion that I would never be totally satisfied until I had completed thAe mission to get around the world on Moonshiner, which had been my original goal. I would just have to accept that I had missed out the Red Sea and Suez but nothing could be done about that given the unfortunate circumstances….pirates in the Indian Ocean last year.

So, I flew out to Menorca at the end of May to join the boat in Mahon and we left after a couple of days of having a look around this quite pleasant island (not too many and mostly the “right kind” of tourists). Dick had sailed the boat across the Med with friends, leaving Marmaris, Turkey in mid March. Moonshiner had been in that part of Turkey since June last year and I spent a month aboard in August just daysailing and mostly anchoring. We had met up with a pair of old friends from Guernsey / Taunton, who are mostly liveaboards, on their Heavenly Twins catamaran, Sundowner…..we had some good runs ashore and enjoyed many sundowners together. Turkey, from the small part I saw, was very pleasant, not too hot, just the right amount of sailing wind at the right time of year…………...and cheap.

 On rejoining Moonshiner, the first destination was a daysail to Mallorca, south and just a little west of Menorca. We arrived in the evening after a motorsail and attached ourselves to a “waiting pontoon” hoping to be able to stay there the night, but a man turned up after a few minutes and said we would either have to leave or pay him 100euros. Eek! No way Jose! So we left, and reluctantly, with much grumbling, found a marina mooring for the night. Our original choice had been the free anchorage outside but it was far too crowded….and we had quickly earned why. Fortunately, in the end, the terribly nice man in the marina said we could have the mooring for that night for nothing as it was getting rather late and we were leaving early the next morning so it wasn’t inconveniencing them at all.

We left and after another half day motorsail, anchored in a bay in the South of the island, Puerto el Arenal for the night. Next morning, we dinghied ashore for essentials and left early the next day for Ibiza, yet another half day trip but this time, we actually had some wind and so could sail properly for a change. We spent the night in the marina at Santa Eulalia…….horribly expensive and just about as far away from the marina office as it’s possible to get and one of those increasingly common purpose built places that seem to cater for tourists and people with big, shiny, showoff, motorboats only. Not a very pleasant experience. One night was enough. The nicest part was being accompanied for a few minutes towards the marina by a lone dolphin.

Next day, we motored the short distance to Formentera, the most southerly of the Balearics. Umpteen ferries cross from Ibiza and create enormous amounts of wash which makes for a lumpy passage! This traffic fortunately dies down in the evening. We anchored on a sandy patch…..you mustn’t disturb the sea grass…they are supposed to have moorings available from the first of June but they weren’t there yet when we arrived so we had no choice. The only thing I shall say about this place, as we didn’t go ashore, is that it appears to be a Mecca for naturist yachties. I simply didn’t know where to look!!

Our next port on the route out of the Med was Cartagena, an overnight sail away and with a marina that looked as though it might cater for sailing people because it’s off the tourist trail. And it was.  En route, we spotted an enormous pod of dolphins madly feeding and, nearby, a small pod of about eight finned pilot whales. We stayed in Cartagena for 4 nights in the end and met some lovely people such as Jackie from E Yorks and Bill from Washington. Bill had been sailing around the world since 1997 with his wife, who had sadly died just a few months ago. They had sailed with Jackie last year and she had very kindly come over to help sort out the boat. We spent a lot of our time in their company and this helped make the stop in Cartagena a very pleasant few days ….we shall stay in touch I hope……but we had to leave….a schedule to stick to if possible……..

Next stop after almost 24 hours was Aguadulce, a small holiday destination for the Spanish, and recommended by a yachtie in Cartagena as a port of call in preference to the more obvious Almerimar which isn’t supposed to be as friendly. Aguadulce was a really nice little place and we stayed for two nights in the marina there, taking a bus along the coast to Almeria for some sightseeing and a bit of necessary shopping too…..I bought a pair of slip on shoes which are the most comfortable I have ever had and I am already wishing I had bought a spare pair…….

Incidentally, en route to Cartagena, we crossed the Greenwich Meridian making this the first time Moonshiner had been in the Eastern hemisphere since July 2010, nearly two years ago and then, on the leg to Aguadulce, we crossed the line of longitude that Guernsey sits on, meaning that Moonshiner had technically been around the world, having crossed all 360 lines of longitude. Land gets in the way from now on!

We had a half daysail to our next chosen (not by me!) stop, Fuengirola. I had heard this name before and we found out why……….aarrghh! The marina was nice enough but it was really hard to get away from the smell of vinegar and pizzas….and the European football was on of course so there was an awful lot of cheering going on all night for some reason……maybe England were playing? Maybe they won, even? Hooray!! The best part about being there was the ability to get on a cheap bus and climb into the mountains to see Ronda. I’d been there before a few years ago with Mary and loved the old town and the tortuous journey to get there, so I thought Dick might like to see it…..It was still really hot as before but it’s such a spectacular place, I’m glad I went again, though I missed going over the bridge to see the old town……just like last time……I was wilting in the overpowering heat and just couldn’t face going any further………just like last time!!

As an aside,this is how I have been amusing myself on the long, long tortuous passages...and I have long way to go......in more ways than one!! I'll try to post a few other photos in the next instalment of something or other......

Fuengirola was the last stop before Gibraltar, the Straits and the Atlantic and this was another half day motorsail. The winds are so flukey around this part of the Med….we had fairly dense fog in Fuengirola and the same on the approach to “The Rock” which made for an interesting approach. Gibraltar is very busy as a lightering (taking fuel etc from anchored ships) place and the Bay was full of fairly large vessels doing just that. I think it’s a tax avoidance thing as well? As we passed one ship that had just picked or dropped off a pilot, the police launch came zooming out towards us……had we transgressed some unwritten rule? It sped past then turned and waited. Then the pilot launch zoomed past and someone on board started shouting at us. Eek! I listened hard and heard him yell at us “You’ve got the Spanish flag up”. So what, we thought? We weren’t going into Gibraltar, but into the (Spanish) marina next door and so the Spanish courtesy flag was correct. We pointed towards this marina, La Linea, and carried on……The pilot boat and the police launch both left. Very childish, I thought.