Sailing Letter September 2015

Sand Artist display at Playa Canteras, Las Palmas

We prolonged our stay in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, to mid-September. Time spent with more boat maintenance and buying spare parts difficult to find elsewhere.  Meeting with Scandinavian team (Fridays on Sailor’s Bar) gave us some social contacts and we spent, among other things, an evening celebrating a 60 year anniversary. We installed the Iridium Satellite system for downloading weather forecasts, changed some more blocks and lines and bought a Danbouy (inflatable). We also searched for gas tubes for the Soda Stream with no success. Down here the use of “sparkling water” is less than in Scandinavia it seems.

We have taken Las Palmas to our hearts so leaving 3:rd week in September felt a bit emotional also leaving many new sailing friends. First night we anchored at Moro Jable ( Fuerteventura) with a calm start of the night, ending with winds sweeping down from the mountains. Not specifically comfortable, so we moved on to Gran Tarajal where we enjoyed it last time. Nice anchorage, good tapas and nice swims. We took the opportunity to clean the hull from algae and slime. The copper coating is still OK but needs looking after when staying still for a month.

From Gran Tarajal we sailed/motored north to Marina Rubicon at Lanzarote´s south coast. Very nice marina! We stayed there for 4 nights enjoying the village and the possibility to do some jogging. However, we found the surroundings a bit touristic and had difficulties finding grocery stores to our liking so we moved on to yet another anchorage an hour to the east of the marina (Papagayo Bay). Fabulously clear water! Easy for me (Eva) to check the anchor position. We admired the flounders staying close to where the chain was moving. Steering up small animals to eat?

End September the wind was going to increase so we set sail (Not so often possible going north) to Arrecife, where we now have a stay for a month to await the winds going to Cape Verde. Here we will do some touristing (with a hire car) and some serious bunkering of food to last for a couple of months, going to the Caribic or Brazil. Also included is a trip to IKEA for herring for Christmas!!

Boat projects

• Mosquito nets for the skylights
• Iridium phone
• Danbouy

Nature

• The number of species is low on the Canarian Islands but we saw yet another sea turtle ( green/brown and rather big) and close to Arreciefe we came across a flock of spotted I (Eva) managed to see three of them close by, two with newly caught fish. It will stay on my mind for quite a while!

Until next time,

BR, Eva &Peter