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Tuesday, November 11th, Las Palmas, Gran
Canaria
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Nearly four days underway and 600 more miles under the
keels, we arrived in Gran Canaria early Friday morning,
having left Morocco as soon as the drenching rain eased
up on Tuesday morning. Most of the other cruisers
in Rabat were waiting a few more days for the seas to
mellow out and the winds to come around to a more
northerly direction. We were dying to get out of
there. In our nearly two week stay we must
have had ten days of solid rain. We were willing
to endure light winds on the nose for part of the
passage in order to flee yet another day of rain.
To
brighten up our last days in Morocco, we did have a
couple of birthday celebrations. Joe tries not to
make too big a deal of his birthday any more,
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but we did it up in style to celebrate Cassie's
eleventh.
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In
between, we squeezed in a Halloween celebration complete
with (from left to right) a Lady Knight, a Nerd, Medusa,
and a Dark Angel.
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The girls were amazingly accepting of the adverse
climatological conditions and eagerly celebrated all
occasions with their friends Celine and Anouk from
"Cenou."
The trip to Gran Canaria was largely uneventful, except
for our first night watch which took us through several
squalls and had us reefing the sails in the middle of
the night. The line that holds the back of the
sail down at our first reef point broke a few hours
after we put the reef in, so we went with the second
reef for the rest of the night. The winds really
weren't that bad except for the gusts in the middle of
the squalls, which hit 35 knots. Of course, rain
also accompanied these systems so it was a bit of a long
night. The next two nights were easy in
comparison. The wind and the seas came around
behind us after the first 36 hours and the rest of the
trip was dead downwind. This isn't the fastest or
most comfortable point of sail for Zia and it is
generally better to sail a little off course but fast,
than go right for the mark with the wind directly at
your back. We sailed the angles for a while, but
Joe still can't stand sailing off course so we
gybed over and sailed wing-on-wing for a bit as well.
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Our new screacher got a good workout and performed
wonderfully. By the beginning of our fourth night
out we decided to put a couple of reefs in the main to
slow the boat down so we wouldn't arrive in Las Palmas
during the middle of the night. We dropped the
hook next to our friends on "Gone Native" at about seven
in the morning.
Las Palmas is a beehive of activity with 250 boats here
or scheduled to arrive over the next few weeks in
anticipation of the start of the Atlantic Rally for
Cruisers. The ARC provides great support and
camaraderie for boats crossing from the Mediterranean to
the Caribbean and it draws a big crowd every year.
We considered participating, but for numerous reasons
decided not to join. First of all, we prefer to
have complete control over our departure date.
Although the rally organizers will change the departure
date if the weather dictates, there is a huge amount of
pressure for them to keep things on schedule. We
also liked the idea of starting off from the Cape Verde
Islands, which are 900 miles further south where the
trade winds are well established. This almost
guarantees a downwind crossing from the start. The
biggest benefit of the ARC is crossing in a group, with
loads of other boats around to render assistance if
needed. We originally thought that we would have a
group of four or five catamarans crossing together so
this wasn't that big of a draw for us. But, plans
change and in the end we will just have "Following
Tides" with us, another Switch 51 who we have been
corresponding with for years but have yet to meet.
Lastly, considering all the above, we decided to save
the $2000 it would cost to join.
Still, we are benefiting from the fact that Las Palmas
is set up with just about anything we could want or need
to get ready for the big crossing. Although we
knocked off lots of jobs in Varazze and Barcelona, it
seems we keep adding them as fast as we cross them off.
There is that busted reef line to replace. In the
process, we discovered that the rollers that the reef
lines run through on the back of the boom need
replacement (perhaps the cause of the busted line?).
There is a list of spare parts available locally that we
need to stock up on; things like fuel filters and oil
for the saildrives. We are shipping a spare part
or two that we can't find locally, just in case, to our
crew, Gregg, who is meeting us in Praia, on the island
of Santiago in Cape Verde on November 27th.
Although pretty well stocked up on provisions since my
big grocery shopping trips in Barcelona, I have taken
the extra time to inventory exactly what we have onboard
so I can be sure that we are all very well fed during
our trans-Atlantic crossing. It is a job that I
have put off since last doing it for our crossing the
other way. I was nudged along by our dear friend,
Solange, from "Casulo"
who sent me a message: "We are
wondering how are the preparations for the crossing.
Christy, please share with us (your readers on the blog)
your grocery shopping. I cannot imagine what it is to
plan so many meals in advance!!!
J"
Well, you asked for it! I emptied all of our food
storage areas, organized, counted, cleaned, and
inventoried or threw out every single food item on the
boat. I haven't quite finished. I still need
to add the fridge and freezer items, drinks, and other
household supplies. For those who are interested,
here is what I have so far. I'll be curious to
see how much I use this on a regular basis. In
truth, it isn't so important when you have grocery
stores within a reasonable proximity. On the other
hand, it is great to know exactly what I have where.
I have also discovered, despite my previous fervent
claims, that perhaps I still do have just a small
problem when it comes to buying, or should I say
over-buying, groceries. Darn!
So, we are finishing up these projects and then plan to
finally meet up, in person, with Darlene and Robert on
"Following Tides". We'll do the 900 mile trip to
Santiago with them as well as the Atlantic crossing.
They have crew arriving on the same flight as Gregg, so
we'll be hanging around with them for the next month and
a half at least. It will be great to meet them
after so many email exchanges. Of course, our
biggest worry is that their boat will be faster than
ours! It could be a very long and miserable
crossing if that turns out to be true! I can just
see Joe throwing books, pots, pans, roller blades and
scooters overboard as he tries to lighten up the boat in
hopes of catching up to our competition. All those
well organized groceries........ :-(
I
bet we'll catch more fish though!
Next Entry
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Many thanks to our friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
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