Last Days in the Canaries

The time for our departure is coming very close at last. The weather has been frustrating our plans for leaving but the north east trades have finally re-established themselves and Saturday 14 December is looking like the day! We have had some extraordinary weather recently though.

First, there has been a long period of light southerly winds which are the worst possible as there would have been insufficient wind to move us very fast and there would still have been an ocean swell to contend with and no wind to steady the boat. Then it blew a southerly gale for three days which made the harbour here in Tazacorte a bit exciting though the breakwater is very good and we didn't surge around too much. We were also treated to a spectacular thunder storm with lightning bolts cracking and rumbling all over the place. There has also been a huge ground swell from the west for a couple of days which must have been generated by a storm off in the north Atlantic. Anyway, all this looks to be settling down at last and we, along with others, are now looking to get south as quick as possible.

Not many photos I am afraid but here are a couple of the waves on the beach and the swathe the flood waters cut over the beach.

Our other energies have been devoted to provisioning. This has to be done quite carefully as obtaining good cheap food will be more difficult in the places where we are heading. There are two elements to provisioning. Firstly, there are the non perishables, mostly tins. Then there are the perishables for the passage to come. The local supermarket chain has the fantastic name of Hiper Dino and we have become regular visitors to them. The boat feels like it must be another inch down on her marks with all the tins of tomato we have got. We effectively have enough to get us across to the Caribbean now. The next stage is to get the perishables for the passage to come. This takes planning of a different kind as we need to ensure that they will keep without a fridge. Fresh unrefrigerated stuff stored carefully is the trick here.

As ever, there are always loads of last minute things that you feel have to be done before you can even think of casting off. The truth however is that there comes a point when you just tidy up what is not stowed properly and go. Once at sea it all ceases to matter and you can relax a bit. In between though you can build up a good state of nerves about it all.

The passage to Mindelo is a bit over 800 miles so we should take eight days to complete it. We always budget on doing one hundred miles a day when on passage but if we are lucky we will go a bit faster than that and we may be lucky and get a favourable current as well.