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After a couple of hours we decided to put the engine on and motor clear of the South of the island before dark to see if there was more wind. Just after dark the wind picked up - but from NNE, almost a dead run, so we dropped the main and sailed under genoa. At first the wind was light, and the sail flapped horribly . . . of course, I should have gone on the foredeck and rigged a pole, but by rolling in a third or so of the sail and oversheeting it a bit we managed to continue sailing with no loss of speed. La Palma looked beautiful astern even in the dark, a high shapely silhoutte wearing a necklace of lights. Later the wind picked up, and by three o'clock in the morning the wind was up to sixteen knots or so and I had almost all the genoa rolled away in an attempt to slow the boat down for a daylight arrival. Perversely enough this was made more difficult by the first ever (for us) appearance of what I suppose must have been the Canary current - over a knot of favourable current all the way, just when we want to slow down.
Once again the skipper had difficulty sleeping off watch - not for fear of any hazards or the weather, but because of the incessant rhythmic rolling - the first time we have really encountered this. The easterly waves on the quarter crossing the NE swell aft certainly didn't help, and neither, I believe, did slowing the boat down - sailing faster would probably have been more comfortable. To add to the discomfort, heavy rolling in Fairwinds is currently accompanied by very loud creaking from the port cockpit locker where the hull works against the wooden panel separating the locker space from the under-cockpit. To fix it we need to have lots of handy rubber wedges (which we don't) and we need to attack the problem while it is doing it . . . which means lifting the cockpit sole at night with the boat rolling heavily. Next time perhaps . . .
As the Eastern horizon lightened we spotted a ferry heading in to Puerto de Estacia, El Hierro's main port. We had been unable to find out any definite information as to facilities for yachts here. Jimmy Cornell's Noonsite says categorically there is a marina and directs boats to go into it on arrival. Google Earth doesn't even show an inner breakwater, but we found another photo on the web - recent but date uncertain - which showed an inner breakwater but no pontoons, just two yachts berthed against the main wall inside the inner breakwater. Optimistically we entered the very well protected inner harbour with fenders and lines ready, but there were no pontoons. We had a look at the wall - smooth enough, but very high and with the only two berths with ladders already occupied. Two guys appeared on the deck of the smallest boat, a Swedish yacht maybe 34ft in length, and we hoped he would hail us over and invite us to come alongside. Instead, one of them picked up a rucksack and legged it without even a wave and the other guy went back down below. We decided to press on to Restinga, on the Southern tip of the island. Kathy took the helm - there was virtually no wind and we were motoring - and I went below and dozed.
An hour later we were halfway to Restinga and the wind suddenly picked up. It appeared to be a wind acceleration zone, although one is not shown in the pilot at the SE corner of this island. Soon we had twenty knots plus apparent wind dead aft, but the seas stayed small - just little whitecaps on three footers. It didn't seem worth the effort of sailing when we were less than an hour away, so to our shame we motored downwind in 25 knots of breeze . . . luckily no-one was around to see it. I checked the pilot again - there is a nasty reef off the point, and soon we could see the swell breaking on it. We rounded the point a good half mile off - the sea breaking on the reef was hard to spot now with whitecaps everywhere in a brisk F7. We turned in when the breakwater bore due N as per the instructions in the book and were soon in the relative shelter of Restinga harbour. It was still blowing a hoolie though, and all the berths further in on the wall inside the breakwater were taken up. An official of some sort appeared and indicated that we should tie up in front of an apparently abandoned trawler. The wall has big standoffs, spaced too close together to get even a small yacht in between, and we approached with trepidation. It turned out the standoffs are rubber, put in, I presume, specifically for yachts. (The fishing boats have all moved off the wall to the new pontoons, which yachts are not allowed on). We came alongside wihout incident and the man on the wall took our bow and stern lines.
We spent an hour or so blowing up the big inflateable fender, rigging springs and wondering if the wind would ever stop. I checked the local forecast on Weather Underground (free wifi here) and the depressing answer seemed to be no. I spoke to a Kiwi crewing on Cubana, a big Freyrs one-design two boats in front of us, and asked if it was always this windy - he said it had been for the past week. |
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Restinga harbour
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Fairwinds at Restinga
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In fact the wind holds the boat back on the bow line and stops it surging so much though, and it is going to help keep our batteries full - no mains power here. This however is the now optimistic, slept, refreshed skipper typing here - at the time the wind howling straight down the wall at a constant twenty knots plus and the restless surging against the gnarly wall were a bit depressing. Unlike the bigger boats, we don't have loads of big fenders in reserve for situations like this - we discussed it and rationed ourselves to just five before we left. Thank goodness for the big orange inflateable fender we bought on Ebay a couple of years ago - just hope it doesn't chafe through or burst as we surge back and forwards on the springs. I have put three of our ordinary fenders inside it to act as rollers and keep it off the wall a bit.
When we were sure the boat wasn't going to immediately self-destruct we scrambled up the wall and went for a brief wander round. It was baking hot even in the strong wind. The town was small, hot and sleepy - very few people about and nothing much happening. It appears to exist for fishing and a bit of tourism, a lot of it diving-related as apparently the S. coast of El Hierro is a frogman's paradise.
It took us ten minutes to see most of the town, then we sat at a table at a bar overlooking the harbour and had beer and tapas. Mike, a Kiwi from the Freyrs 48 Cuhana, joined us for a beer. He has signed on as crew for the crossing to Barbados, but they have been delayed now by nearly six weeks - first in La Gomera, then here - waiting on parts. He had hoped to be across and to have flown back to the UK by now. He is surviving on sailing - has done a lot of deliveries, and has completed a cruising instructor course with Sunsail. We bought the beer, as I get the impression he may be even poorer than us.
Sun 21st Jan 2007 - La Restinga, El Hierro
La Restinga on a Sunday is very much quieter than a very quiet thing. I can categorically say that nothing was happening. The only thing missing was the tumbleweeds. Even the bar across the harbour was shut, and we had to junt around for one that was open. The propretor, a dark-skinned wee man with a prehensile face, served us a couple of canas and gave us an ashtray full of peanuts in their shells as tapas.
Such is the excitement in La Restinga on a Sunday afternoon. In the deserted village it is baking hot, but down the harbour wall the wind is still blowing hard. |
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Main Street, La Restinga |
Mon 22nd Jan 2007 - La Restinga, El Hierro
With the wind gusting up to 30 knots and pushing the bow onto the wall, and with a fair bit of surge coming in on the high Spring tide, we had a fairly disturbed night - especially after our giant inflateable fender deflated.
At two o'clock in the morning it looked as though our side decks might be in danger of hitting the slight overhang at the top of the wall, and so a vigil was instituted, lines were added and adjusted, car tyres were deployed suitably and a lot of tea was drunk. As we started to go down again we discovered that even without the inflateable fender the rubber standoffs kept the boat off the wall and did not appear to be marking the hull, but the constant bumping and squealking did not make for a restful sleep.
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La Restinga |
At 2 in the afternoon with high water approaching again the inflateable fender has been mended with hypalon adhesive and duct tape - how long that will last is anybody's guess. At the moment though it is giving us a smooth ride up and down the wall. Unfortunately we do not feel confident enough to leave the boat for long enough to hitch into Valverde - maybe on Tuesday.
We are monitoring the weather closely and at the moment we are hoping to leave here sometime on Wednesday when the wind is forecast to go light and to begin to swing round over 24 hours through SE to SW and then N, before blowing a hoolie from the NE next weekend. It's a small window to get back to the security and comfort of San Sebastian, but hopefully we will manage to squeeze through it.
Come evenng the fender repairs had held up and life against the wall calmed down. As by now it looked unlikely that we would hire a car we decided to treat ourselves to a meal out instead at a restaurant we spotted while walking around La Restinga. La Vieja Pandorga is a proper restaurant - the maitre d' has obviously been trained outside El Hierro, and it was all very profesional with huge square white plates decorated with sauce round the rim and what you could only describe as a professional standard of waiting and service. We had pickled tuna salad with almonds, olives and huge slices of orange and lemon as a starter, then Kathy had at least 12 ounces of the primest nicest fillet medallions I have ever tasted while I had chocos - a type of round squid - in canarian sauce. We had a bottle of local vino tinto and finished up with a chunk of fresh local pineapple and expressos (cafe solo) - I had a brandy with mine. Including bread, water and tip the whole lot came to 45 euros. We retired to our bunks and slept well.
Tues 23rd Jan 2007 - Hitch Hike to Valverde, El Hierro
After a fairly sound nights' sleep I went up to the harbour office in the morning . . . it was still closed. The whole place is so laid back it is well beyond horizontal - it makes the West coast of Scotland look positively frenetic.
We decided to try our luck hitching into Valverde, and got a lift all the way after walking maybe a hundred yards up the hill. Conversation was a little difficult, but we managed to establish that the South of the island is much drier and that it is cold and wet in Scotland.
As we gained altitude and left the dry volcanic rubble of the area round Restinga the landscape changed. Many drystone dykes separate small fields, of which perhaps one in twenty is cultivated. There is the odd cow and a few sheep. |
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Valverde
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Council building
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Church, Valverde |
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Valverde and the hills behind |
Higher up we enter the clouds, the road weaving in and out of ground-sweeping cumulus in a manner I have only previously experienced in aircraft. Soon we were in the ubiquitous Canarian pine forest - a remarkable tree, it is able to withstand forest fires - the bark blackens and the needles singe and burn, but it shrugs off the experience and soon puts out new growth.
Valverde is just like a big village, no high rise buildings at all, no obvious centre, just houses sprawled out across a couple of ravines over 500m up above the cliffs, the only Canarian capital that is not on the coast - and noticeably cooler as a consequence. We wandered randomly round pretty much all of it in less than two hours, visited the 'ethnological centre' - a small museum - and had lunch in a quiet cafe. Council workers were beginning to take down the Christmas lights.
We caught the school bus back to Restinga at two thirty. The mob of teenagers pouring out of Valverde High School and onto the buses could have been coming out of any school in Europe, making me wonder if the current text generation spells the end of cultural diversity even more certainly than MacDonalds.
A pleasant bus ride back - local buses are such a good (and cheap) way to see the countryside. After doing a bit of work on the conputer we went out for a beer or two with Mike from Cahuna then bought our El Hierro T-shirts from one of the only two shops here before returning to the boat. The wind had dropped, but the surging seemed worse - the swell must have been up a bit.
Tomorrow the wind is predicted to turn S. of East, and we plan to head off for San Sebastian mid-afternoon for an overnight passage back to La Gomera. Apart from anything else we are starting to need a shower . . . it is a pity we didn't see the West coast of the island, but I am afraid that we have now been here, done it and got the T-shirt.
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