Sunday 20 November  2022

Puerto Calero, Lanzarote

Today's Blog by David  (Time zone: UTC )

Finally, after nearly three interminable years of Covid and refit we are at last in Lanzarote at the East end of the Canary Islands  waiting for a weather window to set off into the Sunset -  headed west!

Terry and I arrived Tuesday last, Peter and Jenna Wednesday,  since when we have been working hard to get the boat fettled, titivated and provisioned ahead of a ~18 day crossing to St Vincent and the Grenadines.  Our ultimate destination on this trip is St Lucia to arrive around 14 December.

Who is Jenna?  Peter’s daughter. She is uniquely qualified. She has served a UK season as crew on a charter yacht, is a qualified YM Dayskipper, Yachtmaster Theory, a budding expert in fine and rare whisky as well as being an excellent cook. (errr….…every skipper’s ideal crew!)  She also has the merit of being 40-45 years younger than the rest of us. (She has no qualifications in geriatric care, though!).  

Here is a crew photo of us enjoying Jenna’s welcome present for the boat: a bottle of fine and rare Scapa -  from the Orkneys, apparently.

First job on arrival was to survey the various repairs that had been accomplished in our absence.  Some rigging work and a routine rig check had been satisfactorily completed and various routine tasks too. The boat was bright an sparkling.

One important  repair was to turn this, (the product of an anchor jammed into a rock crevice and damaged on retrieval - - about which there is a much longer tale I could tell J) :

Into this:

A hire car facilitated numerous journeys to and from the super market as we gradually stocked up for an expected journey of up to three weeks.  It was also useful when commissioning the fishing tackle. That involved three journeys:  One to get some new lures and traces, one more after realising we needed a new reel and rod and another when we discovered the new reel didn’t fit the new rod – or vice versa.

One other job was to work out why the SSB wasn’t transmitting, occasioning four of five hours effort as first Peter then I rummaged around in the lazarette. We declared victory several times only to find it still didn’t work on test until we eventually dismounted the tuner entirely and cleaned up EVERY earth connection (of which there are several,  including the connection  to the grounding strip which appeared to be the culprit).

We have not been rushing through our tasks because the weather forecast this weekend was quite blowy: 25-38 kts but from behind.  Nothing we wouldn’t  be able to contend with at sea, (indeed a few years ago we’d have been happy for the wind)  but not really conditions that you’d want to start out with a rusty crew.

We are not in a rush – Hakuna Matata and all that!  So, it’s Sunday morning.  We’re nearly ready to go – just need to do a thorough crew briefing  -although  that will take a while. 

Current plan is to set off west, at first light tomorrow. Wish us well!