Car Hire - Visiting the Island

We had long intended to hire a car here on La Palma and yesterday I went down to the airport to pick it up. The island is certainly spectacular and we still have another day with the car so I will add some photos if they turn up. Yesterday was successful apart from the fact that I was not doing very well behind the camera. Today we went to see a volcano, El Volcan de San Antonio but the current southerly winds mean that the southern tip of the island is fog enshrouded so no pictures were possible. At least the visitor center was cheap at €5 each.

A typical view of the edge of El Caldera de Taburiente. This is a relatively old huge geological feature with lots of vertiginous walking around it which we wimped out of.

Clouds are a big part of the views of this island. This is looking across south from a mirador called El Time above Tazacorte.

The road up from the bottom of the Taburiente to Mirador El Time was a dramatic set of switchbacks. I enjoyed driving it but some of the corners are a bit "interesting"

Finally, for now, the afternoon light on the west coast was quite dramatic though my best effort at capturing it was not very successful. This island is much greener than the other Canary islands as well.

Downwind Rig

Modern boats are not well suited to sailing downwind. The ideal rig for prolonged downwind sailing is a square rig but this is of course hopeless on any other point of sail. We are therefore having to make special provision to allow our sloop rig to work more efficiently on the long downwind passages in the trades.

Essentially, this means using two head sails and leaving the main down. For this you need two poles to hold the sails out. We only have one of course and a second pole was always outside of our budget as we needed to get other things and the amount of time actually spent sailing in the trades is comparatively small. Happily, there is a way that I read about that allows you to get by with the one pole we have. The way is to use the main boom with a thing called a snatch block on it to route the sheet for the second head sail.

Thus, we will have the large genoa poled out to windward with the spinnaker pole in the usual way. We will then pull the boom out at right angles and hold it there with a preventer. Then we will hoist the smaller working jib with the spinnaker halyard and tie the foot to the samson post.

I have finally got around to working this out and so feel ready to use it for real now. I can't claim originality for this but got the idea from an inspirational book called Ocean Cruising on a Budget

You can order it here: Ocean Cruising on a Budget at Amazon. If you are bothered about Amazon and their tax avoidance, Bookharbour also stock it!

It will be exciting to try it out for real though the weather is looking decidedly light for the next few days. We are hoping the trade winds will fill in again before we come to leave for the Cabo Verde Islands! Setting it up here in the marina was quite a palaver but I think it will get easier though the pictures show better. Do bear in mind though that the wind will be behind us and the sails will not be flopping around as they are.

We have also now got, in best long distance cruiser style, a series of jerry cans lashed to the side deck!

Updated cruise album

Thanks to decent wifi here I have added a load of photos to the cruise album.

Cruise Album

La Gomera to La Palma and Santa Cruz

All the Canary Islands have had their own distinctive character and the most westerly of them has been no less different than the others. Of course we have only had a chance to visit the capital city Santa Cruz so far but it has a very different feel to the others. It is visibly wealthier than any of the others including Las Palmas and Tenerife. In fact, it feels to us much more like mainland Spain and Galicia in particular. This is in part due to the architecture but also the fact that it is cloudier. I don't think however that it will rain as much as it did on us in La Coruna in 2011 when we had as much rain as you would expect in south west England.

The passage across from San Sebastian on La Gomera was also enjoyable though long day sails are very tiring. We eventually tied up a bit after nine in the evening which made for nearly thirteen hours sailing. We were treated to yet another dramatic sunset though. Entry to the harbour is a bit of fun as you have to get clearance to enter just like big ships when still two miles out. You then find your way past the cruise ship, ferry and container docks into the head of the harbour. The marina itself is fairly soulless and there is a bit of noise and smell from the commercial docks. More intrusive is the smell of cooking fat from the McDonalds though. Why do they always stink?

Here are the obligatory snaps:

The old houses here have very distinctive balconies which are also very photogenic.

We are due to leave here tomorrow to go round to a harbour on the west coast called Tazacorte – the marina is supposed to be cheaper than here though we really like hit here so may blow the expense and come back before finally leaving.

Talking of leaving, this will be our last stop in Europe and also we need to be ready for some much longer passages. We are therefore drawing up lists of last minute jobs that should have been done ages ago. One of the more exciting things has been to get a Barbados courtesy flag. We don't have any others for the Caribbean but we have read that there is a woman in the Mindelo market who will make them up for us very cheaply. We are starting to feel excited but also a bit apprehensive at being on the threshold of a major new step in the cruise.

While wandering along the waterfront, we got a good view of La Gomera:

Then, later on we saw this rather bored man watching a brass band in the main square of town:

Position Update

There is another yottie blog site where you can use your satellite phone to send position updates which gives a lat and long. We don't run to that here but we have escaped from La Gomera and are now in Santa Cruz de La Palma. We had a nice sail to get here but haven't explored ashore yet. Boring photos and such like to follow.

A Walk In The Park

La Gomera is a very steep island but the center is realtively flat not being formed by a great big volcano like La Palma and Tenerife. Also, the main peak, El Alto de Garajonay, is quite accessible so we decided to try visiting it. I worked out a route where we would get the but to a place called Igualero and then we could walk over the top and catch the bus back from somewhere closer to San Sebastian on the other side. This would be neither too long or too steep for our unfit legs and poor heads for cliff edges.

This view is typical of the island with a mixture of sedimentary and basalt. These islands would really be a geologists dream though the human interaction would really make it a geography teachers dream location

The problems started when the bus failed to stop in Igualero. I suspect that I did not press the button hard enough to tell the driver to stop. The next stop was at a place called Chipude about five kilometers on and so another five KM from the mountain top. We then set out to walk back as waiting for the bus would have taken for ever. It is a long time since I have done any orienteering and I am decidedly rusty at it! The upshot was that we wound up zig zagging across the north eastern side of the island though we did eventually get on the right path. To cap it all off, we took a wrong turn very near the top and wound up back on the road about a km from Igualero and also in thick fog. So, we have failed to climb to the easiest peak in the Canaries and have managed to clock up about eight kilometers of walking.

The higher parts were all in fog and we didn't get to walk in the cloud forest on the other side though some of the landscape in the high places was amazing for it's mossy greenness.

Perhaps the strangest part was when we did get the bus back down. We had prepared by taking trousers, sweaters and waterproofs all of which we needed up there. Then, on arrival back at San Sebastian, we had to instantaneously strip everything off to get back to sub tropical winter temperatures. I didn't take a thermometer but it must have been a good ten degrees cooler up there!

Back in San Sebastian

We have briefly come back to San Sebastian De La Gomera as it provides a better route to La Palma. In two weeks time this will be starting.

Atlantic Rowing Race

They are gathering here now.

Some people think that sailing across the Atlantic in a thirty four foot boat is hardcore. However, it is nothing compared to rowing a 25 foot boat across the same bit of ocean!