Change in plans

Sunday night Phil and Kim came over after dinner and we had very nice evening. They're planning to go cycling next year first 6 months in Argentina then Europe and after that they want to go to New Zealand. So there won't be much sailing for Phil then anymore... :-o

Anyway, when the rigger came on Monday to change the fitting of the halliard he was done in 15 minutes. However, since he was up the mast he also checked the rest of the rigging and it turned out that the inner fore stay was broken. Apparently the 40 kts coming down here had taken its toll.. :-(

Well, we can't cross the Atlantic with a broken stay. It's not hard to fix that but not on the spot so the plans had to change.

Andy had to be in Las Palmas on Wednesday to get there in time for his flight home and we couldn't sail there. So he booked a flight from Lanzarote to Las Palmas for Tuesday.

Well that was the end of his trip... we all enjoyed it very much. The 6 weeks were quite eventful and looked way longer, until it's over,.... then it seems only a week ago since I picked him up at Schiphol.

Rutger and I spend the whole day cleaning and doing all kind of little jobs. Also we got the inner fore stay off and it was definitely broken.

Wednesday, the rigger will come over to pick it up and hopefully Thursday the new one will be ready. We'll see. In the mean time we'll reorganize the boat a bit to get it ready for the crossing, we have to stow a lot of things then.

Vulcanos

Oct. 28^th Today Rutger and I rented a car and explored the Island a bit.

We drove to the South and checked out the bay we'll be anchoring this weekend. It looked really nice and, for he first time we won't be the only boat anchoring...

We'll be staying over for the weekend and return to Puerto Calero on Monday to have the rigging of the genoa halliard fixed. Antonio in Lagos suggested to use the uphaul as a halliard for the genoa and that worked out very well. However, I can't use the originally halliard as a uphaul for the spinnaker pole. So when I went over to check on how to refill the gas canister, I saw this van with all this advertisement about rigging, electronics, fitting and stuff. I asked the guy if he could help me with the rigging. The boss was a German technician and came down to have a look. He suggested a better way so I didn't actually had to rig a new halliard and he could help me... only not before Monday. He also told me that with the ARC and stuff, I would not have a chance to get somebody at Grand Canaria to fix it. Anyway, if we leave Lanzarote Monday, we'll still be in time for Andy to catch his plane, so that's what we'll gonna do then.

Also, we can get together with Phil Sommervile and his partner. They happen to fly in on Sunday for a short holiday. Phil was our instructor at Cornish Cruising and was also in the picture to join us for the crossing of Bisquay, so that would be nice.

Anyway, after having checked out the bay, we drove up North to the national park with the vulcanos. The drive itself was along the coastline with the swell breaking spectacular on the rocks.

After a while we came at the national park where we did a 40 minutes bus tour through an amazing landscape. Just black lava stones and rumble with no vegetation at all. The rocks were even darker then the asphalt of the road.

We ended at the restaurant where there were several holes in the ground down to the still very hot lava. To show that, they poured water into one of them and a few seconds later it turned into a geyser. In another hole they threw a bunch of twigs that was set on fire a few seconds later. At one point you could see the reddish glow of the lava. Over it they had mounted a rack and used it for a barbeque. You couldn't really look into it because of the heat.

The whole Island is just one big lump of lava with none to very little vegetation. That's also because it hardly ever rains. Not even enough to provide drinking water for the inhabitants.

Anyway, it was a very interesting tour in a moonlike landscape :-)

Puerto Calero

We made landfall at Lazarote in Puerto Calero, a great marina with all the facilities we were up to like excellent showers and a laundry :-)

After the storm was over, we had a really great sail. With a 10 to 15 kts wind on a beam reach we made 7 to 8 kts in speed over ground. The plan was that Rutger would do the cooking at least once on this trip and with the sea state calmed down he made a great carbonare!

As the gribfiles indicated, the wind decreased to 5 kts, backing to SW. With still a 60 nm to go we decided to start the engine and set it at 1500 rpm so that we would make landfall next morning instead of in the middle of the night.

At around 9.30-ish we got into the marina. Time is getting confusing. The Canaries are on UT time but they're actually a bit too far west for that. When I checked in I also had to ask the receptionist what date it was.. When you're at sea for 5 or 6 days, you loose track of days and dates.

Anyway. Today, Rutger and I will rent a car to explore the Island. Andy has a real trouble with his foot so he'll stay on the boat. He has to see a doctor fort that as soon as he gets home.

By the way, the fish we couldn't identify turned out to be a dolphin fish.

On our way to Lanzarote - Canary Islands

Oct. 24th @ 22:45hrs - Position: 31°10.907N/012°47.826W

We're 5 days at sea now since we left Lagos, Portugal. All is fine and we are having a great time.


As posted earlier, we had to change our plan of destination because of the low that was coming in from the Azores. The best course was going South. That way we would be on the best side of the depression. That course was directly heading for the Canaries. We waited until the evening to decide whether we would keep this course or tack to get to Madeira. When I downloaded a new gribfile it showed that we would have to steer directly into the depression if we would tack to get to Madeira so we decided to keep our course to the Canaries.

However, there was a secondary low developing rather quickly that wasn't om the gribfile yet. When the wind kept picking up I downloaded a new file and that showed a SW wind increasing to 30 kts. Still this was the best course to steer; you don't want to go West into the northern section of a depression. East was the direction the depression itself was heading and North would take us to the primary depression. And, after all,  South is the best option if you can stay East of the center.

We just made it to stay East of the center but came really close. The barometer stayed just 1 millibar over the lowest on the gribfile. The wind picked up to 35 kts :-o With the second reef in the main and the staysail ½ furled in, the boat was in perfect balance and so we sailed close reach into the night. Dinner was changed to noodles, cooking was no real option anymore. At day break the wind had increased to 40 kts with a spectacular sea state. Good thing that you can't see the waves at night …. :-o

Beating a force 9 in the Atlantic by hand-steering was originally not in the plan but nonetheless quite an experience. I changed the watch system back to 4 on 4 off with Rutger's watch overlapping the last half of Andy's and the first half of my watch every other watch. I slept on the floor of the saloon in case an extra hand was needed. We managed very well and apart from the moments you'd wish someone would turn off the wind for a moment, we were okay.

Next morning I downloaded a new gribfile that showed that we were coming out of the heavy wind section, By noon the wind should have decreased to 15 kts and so it did. By that time we had all the sails back on and were speeding with 8 kts over ground to Lanzarote, the first of the Canary Islands we could get to. After 5 days we all are very well in for a decent shit, shave and shower :-)

Change of Plans.....

Oct. 23rd - Position 33°44.074N/012°52.291W

We were heading for Porto Santo and the sailing was nice after the second day. The wind was fine, about 10 kts and from the perfect direction.

However..... the wind picked up to 25 kts true and veered to SW. As we were on starboard tack to avoid some heavy rain, I downloaded another weatherfax. It showed that the depression that was forecasted for Portugal was indeed heading due East. That would mean that we had to deal with over 30 kts straight on the nose … for another 170 nm.

So we decided to keep going South, avoiding the hardest winds and that was in fact the course to steer to the Canaries. It'll be a bit further but we're good on food and water :-)

So far we have been able to avoid any rain. The plan is to keep it that way, and we'll sail around the Canary Islands for a few days.

On to Porto Santos, Madeira Archipelago

Oct. 22nd, Position 35°16.596N/11°10.899W

After seeing Monique out at the station, right after lunch Andy and I went to the supermarket to get the stuff for the trip, while Rutger cleaned the boat and topped up the water tanks.

It's been 2 days now since we left Lagos and are about half way to Porto Santos, a small island just 20nm NE of Madeira. We didn't spend much time in Lagos so we thought it might be nice to make an extra stop over at Porto Santos.

Just after we left Lagos, we were visited by the Portuguese Coastguard.They called me over the radio and soon after they came over in a dinghy. It was just a routine inspection and they were very polite and friendly. They didn't search the boat or anything, but checked all the documents, licenses, safety equipment and then left again. Over the radio the skipper told me I had to report to the maritime police at Porto Santos or Madeira to buy a tax... I have no idea what kind of tax he was referring to .. I'll see it when I get there...

There is a bit more wind so we had a good sail so far but every now and then we also have to motor a bit. The weather is great, sunny and the nights full of stars until sunrise.. :-)

The storm that was forecasted does seem to move NE after all, but still,I don't want to take any risk. The forecast in general could be a bit more specific. On the navtex there was a gale warining for the area between 25° and 7° W and parallels 35 and 45; that is a huge area, about 600 by 600 nm... Anyway, we're at the far south of this area and lows always move to the North, so we'll be fine.

It's very quiet and peaceful in this part of the ocean. Occasionally a freighter or tanker passes, but in general we have no pings on the sea-me. So we can actually switch the sounder on to watch out for other vessels What a difference with before, if we turned on the sounder then it looked like as if constant Morse code messages were coming in...

So, a good moment to write this short update, killing time of my night watch :-)

Hello and goodbye Lagos

It was a nice trip to Arrifana anchorage. The wind picked up enough to sail and we hoisted the spinnaker. With only 12 kts of wind we did better on speed then when motoring :-)

Also the swell picked up and by the time we entered the bay, the swell was as in the pilot book, … making the bay the place to be for surfers …

The boat was swinging like a roller coaster but the waves were spectacular!! Rutger regretted very much not to have taken his surfboard with him … :-o

We could not barbeque in this kind of movement and Andy managed to fix an easy dinner. We couldn't stay for the night, the anchor alarm kept going off and the rocks didn't look too comfortable .. So we decided to move on after dinner to Lagos.

When I came on watch at midnight, we had just passed Cabo de Sao Vincente. Actually we were just south of Sagres with a nice and sheltered bay where we could anchor.

It would be nice to get to Lagos in daylight, so we headed North and dropped the hook for the rest of the night.

After a nice swim, Rutger and Monique, we left for Lagos, with... 15 kts of wind :-)

The wind died again after an hour or so....

Anyway, Rutger went back to fishing again and caught a beautiful fish. It looked like a tropical fish and we could not find it in the book.

We arrived at Lagos around 4 pm and planned to stay there for a couple of nights. When I checked in at the marina, I asked if they would know someone to look at my furling system. They gave me the number of Antonio. He was in fact working on a boat on the next pontoon and came over to have a look. He went up the mast and when he came down again, it was fixed :-) He told me to use the uphaul as a genoa halliard because of the better angle and that was it.

When we were moored, our neighbors told us there was a big storm forecasted with massive rain for coming Sunday. A very deep low at the Azores was heading due East, which is a bit out of the ordinary. They're supposed to go North-East. Anyway. I downloaded the gribfiles at Ugrib and Zygrib and they were consistent with the forecast. So we decided not to stay in Lagos but leave the other day. That would give us time enough to go South and West to Madeira and avoid this bad weather.

So unfortunately we won't get to see much of Lagos … It looks like a very nice place. Anyway we had a very nice dinner in the old center. It was Monique's last night onboard .. :-(

She did manage to get the card of Pedro the fado singer though, so she'll have something to dream about on her flight back :-)