Apologies for the delays everyone. This is about my 10th attempt to update the blog. Unfortunately getting consistently reliable wifi has been a pain in the butt. I've got lots of photos but pretty difficult to find the time to edit and download them.
We (myself and Min, my sister, from Dublin) left Morro Jable at the bottom of FuerteV at 0530 last Sat morning, after spending an hour unshackling our chains and snubbers. It was forecast to be a 4.6m swell day, but at least the wind was to be in the right direction. It was a dramatic dawn with cold katabatic winds sweeping down from the barren hills and a lowering dawn sky and a pale ghost of a moon. As we needed to keep well south of the lighthouse and final headland to avoid offlying rocks we carried on motor-sailing until well after dawn. The first few hours of this little 55 mile trip were a rough old ride with a mighty big swell up the stern. Finally by late morning the sky cleared, the sun came out, and we found ourselves rolling along under single reefed main at 7.5 kts towards the N coast Gran Canaria.
Land-ho by 1230 and the rest was a bit of a routine ship avoidance and coasting exercise.
Las Palmas is a big bustling busy harbour with lots of stuff at anchor and much movement of container ships and cruise liners. The yacht marina, muelle derportivo, is tucked into the inner left hand side of the harbour.
We got in just in time to see the harbour office closing for the day so we were left to our own devices at the reception pontoon along with some mighty fancy big yachts. In fact Las Palmas is full of ginagorous superyachts. Swan and Oyster 80's are just so 'now' at the moment. Must get one.
Anyway its 0049 now and I'm falling asleep so back later.
Keep up the good work Mike, its great to be able to follow your adventure and exploits. Wish I was there too, with my board by the sound of that swell! The diving is pretty good too around the Canaries if you get the chance mate.
ReplyDeleteTake care,
Steve