The Canaries at Last!

Heading south and feeling the mojo returning with the sun and warmth. So good to be restocking the tan with solar power. Time to get the prodder back on and the asymmetric up! Oh Yeah…

Cesare was channelling Mattia’s 120% work ethic the DIY continued with cockpit speaker install so we can rock sounds sailing into the sun.

Awesome afternoon sliding south chasing the sun under kite. Memories are made of this stuff.

Beautiful dawn over the open sea. Lovely to be away from the Moroccan coast and the traffic jam of fishing boats and nets. Record was Cesare’s 25 confusing lights around us at once…

Time and energy was finally available for the much awaited fishing gear. Thank you Granny & Grandad for the kid’s rods.

Wind came around for a close reach, perfect to create some apparent wind in the quiet breeze and flat seas. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.

Not competitive or anything, but always happy to chase down and pass another boat. Target this time was a late model Lagoon who was going surprisingly well. Just not as well as us romping along on a close reach, #2 reef and full jib giving us solid 8.5 knots in 16-18 knots apparent. Had a nice VHF conversation with them, only working out later when we exchanged emails we were both talking to a different boats than we thought and we were talking to a Catana 65.

Dad had also made up his (slightly) more expensive fishing rig. Score so far, one twisted up line for a calamari washed up on the deck overnight…

Finally Land Ho and first sight of the Canaries! My brother has only been waiting a week for us and we are only a month behind when we thought we would arrive in the Canaries… We are on the way to Las Palmas so still another nights sailing to go. The whole island group looks like an amazing place to explore so is added to the long list of places we need to come back to and spend more time at.

Wait a minute, we are on the board! A small tuna too well hooked to be released was landed as we arrived in Las Palmas. Note the warm weather shorts and tee shirts at last!

The happy crew on arrival! So good to have Cesare on board, he fitted right into the family team and brought welcome expertise and welcome night watch sharing.

After not recognising my brother on the dock for a few minutes, oops thought he was a marina line handler, Chris was straight to work. The muppet at the fastener shop back in the Algeciras refit managed to give us mild steel M20 washers instead of the 316 Stainless we ordered. And so we had to undo the rig because they were at the top of the forestay and on the chain plates of course… Take a magnet when shopping people.

Arrival at the Las Palmas marina was a bit chaotic with only one guy trying to run the whole massive marina on Sat. No wonder there was no helpful answer on the VHF. In the above photo we are parked/squatting on the fuel dock so they have to get around to dealing with us. We managed to stay there all afternoon and into the evening after a “no one can be bothered cooking let’s get a takeaway telepizza dinner”. We managed to get checked in but got fobbed off with a several day waiting list queue to get into the marina and kicked off to the anchorage late evening. A guy we spoke to thought there were plenty of spots, just not enough staff to be bothered getting the boats into the slots. This theme continued all our stay with over an hour wait in the office to be served. The perils of paradise. Never mind as waking up the next morning to a beautiful day and even better, our friends on Slice Of Life anchoring next to us. Dinghy mission over to retrieve their kids for a needed play date and so their parents can rest.

A confusing three way conversation between us, the marina tender with limited English and Slice Of Life followed mid-morning. Yes we have a spot for you two days early. Hmmm, not going to complain. But we cannot fit Slice of Life. Odd to be able to fit a cat and not a mono in the many empty spaces we saw? Garbled something, I think he meant is it OK if they are next to you? No problem. OK follow me soon. Neither of us were quite sure what was happening, but we are about to be shown into the marina so nod and smile. We ended rafted up together in the little multihull pen so perfect!

Kids were pretty happy to find a rock maze next to the boat to play in and quickly rounded up other boat kids for lots of adventures.

Adventures terrorizing the local large crabs.

And building forts complete with bows and arrows…

Yay! We have a Chef on board to deal to the modest tuna we caught!

Afternoonsies with tuna appertisers on SOL,

Ended up drifting into lovely dinner. Cheers guys.

Beware hairstylists, your next customer is a bit excited to be there.

Christopher Columbus sailed the Atlantic in that? Just happy to get a bit of history into the kids before they rush off to look for toy shops in the big mall behind.

Wandering the town and touristic beach.

Some pretty cool sand sculptures. Will have to up our sand castle game I think…

Phew, that was hard work…