Boats met on passage

Las Palmas is a real crossroads of the Atlantic for cruisers and we seem to have spent all our short time here meeting new people or catching up with people last met hundreds of miles away. Here is a brief list

Pampero of Down - met in Playa Blanca en route across Atlantic
Kika - Entering ARC - another Rival no less
Spirit of Penmar - met first at Playa Blanca probably en route across Atlantic
Moontide - Met first at Rabat en route across Atlantic

In addition we know that others are in the area and hope to catch up with them
Synergie - first met in Portimao
Moonstone of Aberdour - first met in Porto Santo


Others we know are also in the area in including Jen on Paikea and possibly Eva Kullgren on Olina.

We leave for Tenerife later on today so will probably not meet quite so many for a while till we gather in La Palma and elsewhere for the final departure south. Close followers of this will note that we should be half way to Tenerife by now but we decided to delay departure till this afternoon as the weather looks for propitious then. Nothing if not indecisive us!

It all feels quite exciting really.

Here is a picture of the anchorage here as well.

Las Palmas (De Gran Canaria)

You have to specify the island for towns and cities here as they often have towns of the same name on other islands. For example, you have a Santa Cruz in both Tenerife and La Palma.

Anyway, we have not been doing much apart from enjoying being anchored in a big port with lots of shipping movements to watch and trying to get the new bolt we will need for the tiller head fitting when it arrives. I have therefore got a bit "artistic" with the camera.

The sunset over the port is actually quite nice.

Sadly, theft of dinghies and outboards is a known problem here. We therefore have to take the outboard off and then hoist the dinghy out like this which makes it much more difficult to steal (we hope anyway).

Long shutter exposure of the other anchored boats.

Fuerteventura to Gran Canaria

We were a bit sad to leave Gran Tarajal as we felt we were starting to get to know the island and we did quite like Gran Tarajal for other reasons than the cheap marina! But, deadlines are looming as we have to be Tenerife by the seventeenth of October at the latest. We therefore planned an overnight passage to Las Palmas on Gran Canaria. The wind was forecast to be quite light so we made a ten AM departure expecting to get to Las Palmas around six the following morning. The wind had other ideas though. We had very little to no wind round the east of Fuerteventura but then met a steady force 5 in the fifty miles that separate the islands. This would have got us in around 0300 but the idea of anchoring in a probably crowded and busy commercial harbour at night didn't appeal so we hove to for four hours.

There are lots of inter island ferries and this beast passed us as we were moving along the far southern end of Fuerteventura.

Heaving to is usually used as a storm tactic. It involves sheeting the jib to the wrong side of the boat so it is aback. You then lash the tiller to leeward. This has the effect of stalling the boat. The backed jib tries to pull her off the wind but then the rudder steers her back into the wind. You have to fiddle with the main a bit but it very effectively stops the boat except for a bit of forereaching and whatever current might be at work. As a storm tactic it is one of the best so long as you have a boat that will heave to well. We do have a boat that will heave to well though full keeled boats do it even better.

Anyway, the tactic worked and after four hours we got back under way at 0500 and arrived off the breakwater at 0830 to anchor an hour or so later. We had been given to understand that the anchorage was a bit rolly but it is not really that bad. We have even cleared in with the marina and can use their showers for the princely sum of €1.50 a day. The charge is calculated on a length times beam formula. We are 30.5 meters square.

This is a very different place from the harbours we have visited so far in the Canaries. Las Palmas is quite a big city and also a large port. As we were entering we shared the entrance with four other ships including a very large oil tanker and two ferries came out. The anchorage is very crowded as berths in the marina are at a premium because of the ARC which effectively blocks out the entire marina. Still we are happy enough here though we will only be staying for four days. We will be moving onto Las Gallettas on Tenerife on Wednesday to meet some friends next weekend. Although we are really looking forward to this it has forced the pace a bit and we feel that 200 miles covered in one week is pushing it a bit for us. We should be able to slow down again though and even get back to Gran Canaria for a longer explore before heading further west to La Gomera and La Palma.

The cruising guide gives you a bit of warning about the marina and it's pests. They are described as having two, four and six legs. Outboard theft is a bit of an issue and you are advised to lock up your dinghy and engine to guard against the two legged pests. Sadly, these tend be other yotties funding their cruising with crime. The others consist of rats and cockroaches. We should be safer from these at anchor as it is easier for them to board boats tied up to a pontoon rather than swim out to here. However, we will have to be careful about packaging to ensure no cockroach eggs get smuggled aboard.

As ever, finding good wifi has been a challenge so there are only a couple of pictures here but there should be a chance to improve on that later in the marina or one of the bars around it. Also, for those of you who find my inexpert oenophile ramblings amusing there should be a chance for us to sample some Gran Canaria wine and I am looking forward to trying the wines from the Orotavia valley in Tenerife!

Broken Stuff

We had been aware that the windmill was not being totally enthusiastic about pushing charge into the batteries and after a bit of investigation we found that it did not have a perfect connection between the regulator and the batteries. Unfortunately, during my fiddling I must have managed to short the leads and the current spike has both blown the fuse but more seriously seems to have killed the regulator. We are trying to see if we can resuscitate it before ordering a new one.

Then, to cap it off: we have the tiller tied up at the moment as we do in marinas and when I glanced at the head fitting I saw this!

This is the top of the rudder shaft where the tiller joins onto it. The crack is where one side of the tiller is bolted on.

Thankfully, this is a known problem with the Rival Owners Association and there is a foundry in the midlands who have the template. We have friends coming down the week after next so just have to get ourselves to Tenerife with the damaged rudder head fitting.

All a bit frustrating but at least we have found out now rather than half way across the Atlantic! Boats are of course very complicated things and bits of it will need repairing from time to time.

Day Sailing

In the past nearly all of our coastal cruising involved day sails. Frequently, a weekend would involve heading to somewhere like Fowey on Saturday and then back to our mooring on Sunday. We were of course perfectly accustomed to this. Now, of course, we tend to sail much further at a time and then sit still for a while before moving on. However, the Canary Islands have so far given us much more day sailing – albeit not returning to a home base of course. We have found this slightly strange and also quite tiring. When you are in home waters, all is familiar and we frequently didn't even need to consult a chart though it was always there should weather conditions change. Here, we have to plan the sail and there is all the excitement of arriving in a new port.

We are almost grateful that our next trip will be nearly a hundred miles rather than the twenty or less that has brought us from Puerto Calero on Lanzarote to Gran Tarajal here on Fuerteventura. Yesterday's sail in particular from Puerto de Rosario to here was quite tiring. The wind was a steady-ish force 5 but this end of the island is in a so called acceleration zone which increases the wind strength by about ten knots. This made for great sailing but we were hesitant to leave the helm to Henry the Navigator (aka wind vane self steering) as he doesn't like it much when you have the main up and the wind is from abaft the beam. On a long passage, we would most likely not have the main up at all and a few degrees of deviation from the course would not really matter much anyway. The coast of the island is steep to and there are no of flying rocks along here but you still want to keep a more precise course than when the destination is some hundreds of miles away.

We are however pleased to be here in Gran Tarajal and have also elected to go into the marina rather than anchoring outside. All the usual attractions of a marina such as showers and still water with no rolling conspired to persuade us to come in here. Pampero is however putting us to shame at anchor out there. We really can't call ourselves proper hard core cruisers. Never mind, at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria we shall have to anchor as the marina will be full of ARC (Atlantic Race for Cruisers) boats.

There is a good wifi spot here so I will try and increase the quota of photos soon.

Fuerteventura

After a lovely few days at Isla de Lobos it was time to move on again. This cruising lifestyle involves a constant series of departures from just discovered harbours for new ones. Usually, we feel ready to move on but it would, in many respects, have been nice to stay at Isla de Lobos for a bit longer. However, we have a looming deadline to be in Las Galletas, Tenerife in just over two weeks and we want to make the most of Fuerteventura. Also, the ground swell had increased which, while not causing us to roll at all, was breaking impressively on the reefs. I tried photographing it but waves always look less impressive through the lens than they do in life.

The sail down to Puerto de Rosario, the capital of Fuerteventura was mostly quite pleasant except for the unexpected wind shift into the south-east as documented before. We were treated to a small school of dolphins at one point but they seemed to be busy fishing and didn't have time to play with any passing boats.

We were initially rather cagey about the anchorage here as the brisk south easterly we had been beating into was pushing a nice slop into the harbour but it dropped with the setting of the sun and we are very comfortable now.

Socialising has been very full of wine as Stuart and Karen from Pampero are also anchored here. It has been very enjoyable comparing notes with someone in a similar boat and with similar plans.

The town itself is not very prepossessing. That sad, we have not done a great deal of exploring but you can see that this is a much poorer island than Lanzarote. The contrast with the mainland is also quite striking even in the poorest parts of Andalucia. We will not spend all the rest of our time here but will move onto either the only real marina here called Gran Tarajal or to an anchorage just to the east of there called Las Playitas.

This afternoon was enlivened when they held a race for the local class of lateen rigged boat. These are based on a traditional local design which used to be used for fishing and whaling. Now, they race them. The finish line was just past our stern and the people on the committee boat invited us round for "paella" later on.

Stuart and Karen from Pampero were also quite keen to go and I was able to act as interpreter though I never cease to get depressed at how bad my Spanish has become. The boats are fascinating being strip planked double enders which a huge lateen rig.

They have a website here

For the non yottie geek, a double ender is one where the stern is the same shape as the bow and a lateen rig is one where the sail is set on a long pole along it's leading edge which is supported by a short mast. The wifi here is not really up to uploading photos so there is only the one picture for now but I will put some more up soon.

First Picture of Sarah Giddings Under Sail

Well, in our ownership anyway. Thanks to Stuart Regan of Pampero of Down for this. We started out "racing" from the anchorage at Isla de Lobos as we were reaching fast and they could not catch us up. However, the wind then did an unexpected shift to the south east and we were promptly left behind by Pampero so we were cruising again.

Puerto de Rosario is a rather more prosaic place than Isla de Lobos but so long as the south easterlies do not persist (they dropped in the evening) it will be a nice enough spot with the capital of Fuerteventura and all it's shops at the top of the slip way so to speak.