Fairwinds Goes South . . .

Adventures in a small boat on a big sea

For once we had a good sail all the way to just beyond Punta Rasca, making five and a half knots under all plain sail. Kathy remarked that this was the first time we had had full sail up for a long time. We only lost the wind two miles from San Miguel, motoring in to arrive in under six hours. We then made the usual mistake of walking past Nina's bar on the way up to the office, and stopped to have a beer and talk to Doug and Anita. They are off to San Sebastian tomorrow to deliver a yacht back to Holland for the owners. We nearly got away when they went back to their boat, but then a British couple we had met the first time we were in San Miguel turned up and it was dark before we got back to the boat. We changed into long trousers and headed up the hill for something to eat.

Fred Olsen heading West

Tues 13 - Wed 14 March - San Miguel - Las Palmas (76nm)

First thing in the morning I checked the weather courtesy of Bob and Mandy (bless them, whoever they are, and their unsecured wireles network). The progress of the low pressure syatem settling in over the Canaries seemed to have speeded up, and we decided to take advantage of forecast favourable winds to leave this morning. We had breakfast, settled our bill and got away just after eleven o'clock.

Outside the marina the WAZ was working backwards, and instead of the usual 30 knots from the NE we had 30 knots blowing us up the coast towards Montana Roca. Past the Red Mountain it got stronger and gustier, and we decided to work our way up the Tenerife coast a bit. The wind became very flukey though, blowing at random speeds from random points of the compass. After a ferocious gust of 45 knots that saw us almost planing over the water at seven and a half knots with the genoa wrapped rouhnd the forestay we decided that being this close to Teide and its outliers in a wind with a Westerly component was probably not a good idea. We fired up the engine and motored offshore again for a bit until we got back into the accelerated but relatively steady windstream which looked as though it might extend from Punta Rasca across the channel towards our first waypoint at Punta Sardinia on the NE corner of Gran Canaria.

Before long we were sailing again under genoa only with half of it rolled away, with 15 - 20 knots over the deck and the wind well aft of the beam. This was an unexpected bonus, and we made good though uncomfortable progress. The seas were once again lumpy and confused. This was our third crossing of the Tenrife - Gran Canaria channel, and we have decided that it is probably always like this - a windy, lumpy and generally godforsaken stretch of water where any wind there is will be accelerated and swirled about as it squeezes between the hiigh mountains of the two islands. As we approached Punta Sardinia a couple of hours after darkness we picked up a weather broadcast from Tenerife Traffic. The forecast for this particular piece of water was 'Variable 4-5, occasionally 6' - no wonder the sea is confused!

We had been hoping for a bit of shelter once past Punta Sardinia, and perhaps the waves did moderate a bit - but the NW swell increased to 3m or more, the wind became gustier and it started raining. About five miles into our journey along the North coast of Gran Canaria the wind became too variable in strength for the Navik to cope in the swell, and with lightning appearing on the horizon and a steady drizzle I decided to revert to the iron topsail. I still had to stay in the cockpit and hand steer however, as the autohelm couldn't cope with the swells or the sudden gusts we were still getting. A few miles from La Isleta at the NW corner of the island the wind eventually died away completely, leaving us to marvel at the impressive swells as they lifted us before eclipsing the streetlights of the nearer towns and villages momentarily before rolling purposefully on towards the unseen shore, their receding slopes lit by the reflected orange glow.

I had remained in the cockpit the whole time while Kathy dozed in her bunk - I knew I wouldn't sleep with the confused seas and strong and variable winds, and there was no point in us both getting knackered. Now I asked Kathy to relieve me on the helm for an hour and went and had a lie down on the cabin sole in the saloon, the most comfortable berth on Fairwinds in a seaway. I was damp and cold, my back was aching from twisting and bracing against the wild rolling and my nose was cut and bruised where I had smashed it into the hatch cover while dodging a wave that decided to come aboard under cover of darkness. Lying flat on my back on the saloon floor I got a brief respite, then it was back into the cockpit to watch for traffic entering and leaving this very busy port as we rounded the corner and began to try to make sense of the jumble of lights as we approached Puerto de La Luz, the Port of Light.

It turned out to be one of the easiest night entries into a strange harbour we had ever done. There was very little traffic about, and Kathy is very good at spotting lights. We were tied up on the Texaco fuel berth in the marina by quarter to four for a cup of tea and a dram before retiring for a few hours sleep prior to doing the paperwork and moving to a berth in the morning.

Wed 14 March - Las Palmas, Gran Canaria

In the morning we were hassled by the Texaco fuel berth guy who told us we should be on the pontoon in front of the marina office, which is now to port immediately you round the breakwater and has a waiting pontoon. Went to the office and signed in, paying the princely sum of 36 euros for a week's berthing. We were told to head for pontoon 17 and given a key for the gate, but instead we were mooored bows to Pontoon 18 with a single stern line. This is the outermost of the pontoons on the Northern breakwater, and subject to swell from every vessel entering and leaving the marina as well as those passing across the entrance. We moored up and sorted the boat out a bit before going for a walk into town. In particular I removed the Navik paddle and scrubbed an incredible amount of growth off it - it has no antifoul on it and had been left in the water since our arrival in Puerto Mogan. The main road through Las Palmas cuts the marina off from the rest of town, with only two crossing points anywhere near. The city seemed incredibly busy and traffic-ridden on this first look and huge dark clouds were threatening, so we made our way back to the port and went into the Match Cup bar for tortillas and beer. Just in time - the heavens opened and for an hour or more the wind blew and the rain lashed down in huge droplets, bouncing a foot off the road. When it eventually eased we wandered back to the boat.

Pontoon 18, Las Palmas Chucking it down

Kathy went into the loos on the way back, and as I made my way back along the breakwater I couldn't help thinking the boat was at a strange angle. As I got closer it became obvious that something had happened; she was lying ten feet further out from the pontoon, with the bow past the last pile and opposite the end of the gangway and the stern angled in towards the breakwater, perhaps ten feet off the rocks.

Luckily the rocks which form the breakwater are fairly steep-sloping here, so it didn't look as though the rudder would have touched bottom. The upwind bowline had somehow slipped off the central bow cleat on Fairwinds, leaving her attached by just the port (lee) bow rope and the single stern line. The bow seemed, luckily, to have missed sideswiping the nearby pile as the stern line, which had been under tension, pulled her back. The bow rope was long enough to let her slide sideways past the pile and the stern rope was luckily just short enough to keep her stern off the sloping breakwater rocks - although at low water some of the rocks look horribly close to where the stern was, and we won't know for certain if she touched until I dive and have a look at the rudder in particular. By the time Kathy got back I had pulled the boat back into position and reattached the starboard bowline. Kathy was rather embarrassed as it was her who had attached the bow lines to the cleat, but really our whole foredeck arrangment is a disaster.

How Fairwinds almost went on the rocks in the marina!

When we got back on board it was to find a distinctly damp boat. This was the heaviest rain we had experienced since Madeira in October, and since then all the various bits of sealant that keep out the UK rain so well have been drying out in the constant subtropical sunshine. Prime suspect for the leak above the starboard bunk in the saloon is the screws holding the wood trim on; although these were all replaced in Bayona with new screws and new Sikaflex it is possible that I was under-generous with the sealant. The other main leak is round the hatch 'window' in the forepeak, which neatly deposits a trickle of weather in the middle of our bed.

After chucking all the wet stuff into the cockpit we had a siesta, then later made tinned fish, tatties and salad and had a game of crib befire dozing off again. Kathy woke me up to go to bed some time after midnight. It was threatening rain again, so we shoved something over the forehatch and fell asleep.

Thurs 15th March - Las Palmas

Still a bit cloudy. Blew up the dinghy to go over to the office and enquire about a dentist for Kathy. She had toothache earlier in the week, and suspected it was an abscess under a broken tooth. Antibiotics cleared up any infection and it isn't sore any more, but a visit to a dentista seems like a good idea.

The outboard, which hadn't been started in five months, burst into life third pull, but when I pressed the engine stop button it stopped never to start again. I freed off the engine stop button, but it made no difference - it ran for a second once, then I couldn't get it started again in spite of cleaning the plug and taking the casing off to peer hopefully at things. Eventually we rowed across to find the office shut - apparently they are having difficulty getting staff in the afternoons. The rowing certainly didn't help my sore back . . .

Rowing back to the boat we had lunch then set off for a wander round Las Palmas. We walked past the beach and anchorage immediately N of the marina looking for a way across the main road. (The anchorage, btw, looks just as sheltered as the outermost pontoons in the marina, and is only a couple of euros a night). The port is cut off from the rest of the city by an incredibly busy road with very few crossing places, and first impressions were not favourable. Once across the roaring torrent of traffic though and into quieter streets it was just another big city, endless blocks of shops of every kind, endless people rushing about leading city lives.

The anchorage at Las Palmas

We had an ice cream and a look round a chandlers, then headed North until we got to Parque Santa Catalina, where we found the tourist office, a bus depot where we bought a 10-ride card (at a huge saving - well worth it) and the museum of science and technology, which looks well worth a visit on another day. This is an attractive area which began to redeem Las Palmas in our by now somewhat jaded eyes.

We turned East from here and headed for Playa de Canteras, the big beach on the E. side of the peninsula northern Las Palmas is built on. It is a beautiful stretch of sand with an offshore reef that the sea breaks on leaving a big calm lagoon for swimming in. We sat and had a beer and watched people swimming in the dusk, then folishly succumbed to an all you can eat Chinese buffet for 6 euros. It was very nice, but by the time we had walked back to the boat we both had indigestion! Managed to get online for a while and went on YBW. My back was still sore - it not something I usually suffer from, and it was making me pretty short-tempered.

Fri 16th March - Las Palmas

Spent a couple of hours making up invoices for Webcraft - there seem to be a lot due at once just now, which should help the cash flow. When the invoices were all made up we rowed over to the office and got the address of a nearby dentist who allegedly speaks English, and also a pointer towards a guy who knows about outboards. His name is Fernando and as far as I could make out he worked at the marina boatyard.

We went back to the boat and had lunch, then wandered off in search of Fernando and the dentist. No-one had heard of Fernando, and the dentist had shut for the weekend five minuted before we got there. The weather was a bit better, so we did some exploring. Not far from the marina we found the Pueblo Canario and visited the Nestor museum. Nestor Martin Fernandez de la Torre was a well-known Canarian artist, and the museum is well worth a visit for the extraordinary 'Poem of the Sea' cycle of paintings, eight of them displayed in a special circular room with a dome. The Pueblo Canario, the elegant square in which the museum is situated, was designed by his brother Miguel in the 1930s and completed in 1956 in what is described as the 'neo-Canarian' style.

Poem of the Sea - 'Night'

Going out of the arch on the Eastern side of Pueblo Canario we found ourselves in some magnificent gardens and spent some time watching the huge Koi carp in the big pond before ascending the landscaped hill behind via a series of paths and steps. At the top we found ourselves in an exclusive neighbourhood of big houses with an excellent view down over the marina and port from the top. We walked along a wide road heading North above the area of Las Palmas known as the 'Ciudad Jardin' or Garden City before heading back downwards to walk through the quiet tree-lined streets with their expensive houses and magnificent flowering shrubs.

Ciudad Jardin

Back at the marina we got a phone number for Fernando, but how I will explain the problem on the phone in Spanish I do not know. Phoning Fernando will be a last resort, I fear. Had a beer on the terrace overlooking the marina at the Embarcadero, then back to the boat where I put together emails to attach the morning's invoices to while Kathy made a curry.

I was on the last but one email and Kathy was about to put the rice on when we were boarded by a lanky bearded guy in perhaps his fifties or early sixties -hard to tell with the beard - who introduced himself as Ian Wallace from Oban. Ian is on pontoon 17 in Spearhead. an Achilles 9 metre, having sailed it down from the Hamble where he bought it. It is his second trip to the Canaries - the previous voyage was five years ago on an Achilles 24, and he knows Will Garner from Aluffe. He still has the Achilles 24, 'Spring Run', which is currently in his drive in Oban.

Ian spun us some salty yarns over a glass of wine. He is a member of the RHYC (Royal Highland Yacht Club) and flies their pennant from his masthead; apparently he was invited to join when he got back from his first trip down here in 'Spring Run'. He is a stalwart of the Oban sailing scene, has cruised widely and is a keen racer and the owner of Borrowboats, which he is currently trying to sell. 'Spearhead is only the second Scottish boat we have met in the Canaries, but Ian has told us that a former teacher from Oban HIgh School is living on and fitting out a steel boat on Isla Graciosa, so hopefully we will meet him in the not too distant future as well.

The curry was delicious when we eventually sat down to it, and it was pretty much straight to bed afterwards. I will have to try to find a decent wireless connection tomorrow to send all these invoices out. Although there is an open network with a strong signal it fails to allocate an IP address nine times out of ten and even when it does the data transfer rate is abysmally slow and frequently it just stops.

Sat 17th March - Las Palmas

Grey and threatening rain this morning. Finally had a shower - the toilet facilities here, while not as bad as Marina Atlantico in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, still leave a lot to be desired. Wrote up the blog for the last couple of days - now I need to find somewhere to upload it, as none of the networks I can connect to on the boat will give me an IP address at the moment. Not sure if this is a function of the Repeatit or something else. If I can find another wifi booster I may be tempted to try it, as the software that comes with the Repeatit is rubbish. The uninstall routine doesn't work and I am now on installation number 8, wireless connection 11.

Windsurfers in the anchorage

Took the laptop to the Match Club bar opposite pontoon 10 in the afternoon and discovered they have a good wifi connection and let you plug in to the mains as well - all you have to do is have something to drink. Had beer and tortilla for a late lunch, sent out all the invoices and uploaded the blog. Inspite of the thoroughly mediocre weather the usual weekend gaggle of Oppies was milling about, while several windsurfers carved up the anchorage.

Sun 18th March - Las Palmas

Still no success starting the outboard, so I asked Edgar from Dicha if he could phone Fernando for me. He duly did and Fernando arranged to come to the boat between three and four tomorrow (Monday) afternoon. (Dicha is a 34 ft steel Van Der Stadt sloop with a solo circumnavigation under her keel which we first heard about in Puerto Mogan - Edgar's friend's Dad has just bought her and the boys are planning to take her back to Spain).

In the afternoon we took a bus down to Vegueta, the old quarter of Las Palmas, and had a wander round. There are some beautiful buildings, and more are being restored. We were particularly impressed by the council's approach to civic amenity in the Plaza de Santa Ana - the Casa Constitorial building at the end of the square opposite the cathedral is undergoing restoration, but instead of the whole ambience of the square being marred by scaffolding and builders detritus there is a tasteful hanging depicting (presumably) the restored building draped over the entire frontage. This is an idea that could perhaps be adopted in some Scottish cities when areas of architectural distinction are marred by scaffolding and ongoing restoration work. It was very quiet and of course it being Sunday all the museums and monuments were shut, but it was very pleasant and we intend to go back to visit the Canarian museum and see inside the cathedral if it is open. From there we walked down into Triana, the old commercial quarter, ducking into the Metropole cinema complex for a coffee when it suddenly started to rain. (There is an international film festival on in Las Palmas at the moment). The serving wenches in the coffee shop were useless, and although we got a cake we waited twenty minutes without getting any coffee. When we came out it had stopped raining but was cloudy and cool, so we bussed back to the marina.

Hiding the scaffolding Santa Ana Cathedral

I spent a couple of hours in the evening working on module 2 of my YM Ocean shorebased correspondence course - 'Spheres' - using the almanac to determine GHA, LHA and declination of a heavenly body at a particular time. Eventually I started falling asleep though and decided to finish the module in the morning, Another glass of wine - the 5l box we bought all those months ago in Portugal seems to have travelled well - a game of Yahtzee and so to bed.

Mon 19th March - Las Palmas

Got up before eight (why I don't know), showered and fired up the laptop intending to finish off the OYM module. For some unknown reason the Pantalan Club gave me an IP address immediately and I managed to download all my mail and deal with that - or at least get the replies ready to send and some web page changes ready to upload, as the IP address vanished as inexplicably as it had arrived shortly after I had downloaded the mail. Kathy meanwhile had returned from the dentist having discovered that he didn't open until twelve. I carried the washing down to the launderette, which had been shut all weekend, and left her there to put the washing on before returning to the dentist, while I went back to the boat and finished off the module before taking the laptop to the Match Club bar.

By the time Kathy came back from the dentist and met me at the bar I had uploaded everything and received my marked questions from Rod, my tutor at Centaur Sailing. Kathy is going back to the dentist tomorrow for an extraction, but she thinks it is safe . . . We had a beer and Kathy wrote a couple of emails, we checked the weather - doesn't look good for leaving here until the end of the week - then went back to the boat to wait for Fernando.

Fernando turned up just before five and took me and the outboard down to the yard. After cleaning the carburettor, checking the spark and replacing my 'old' fuel he told me it was the valves - or at least, I think that was what he said - and said he would fix it tomorrow and deliver the engine to the boat in the afternoon (manana por la tarde).

Declan had told me in an email that there was a Vega in Las Palmas, so we went to look for it and found not one but two. No-one was on board either of them, but both looked pretty salty and well travelled. One was Swedish, and the other one didn't seem to have any flag. More on these later if we meet the skippers - it will be easier to look round the marina if we get the outboard going. A 26ft Swedish boat - a Maxi Magic - arrived beside us on the pontoon just as we got back to the boat - they had just come from Morro Jable. A smaller boat than us and a husband and wife crew in their fifties - a first on our travels.

Albin Vega Liza V634

Tues 20th March - Las Palmas

Miserable grey day with rain showers and a stiff breeze. I am still waiting for it to get warm and sunny so I can snorkel round the boat to make sure she didn't touch the rocks on her excursion last week. In the morning Kathy went to the dentist while I worked on Module 3 - The Sextant. The Astra IIIB actually saw daylight for the first time in months and was checked and adjusted for the various errors. I then got the blog up to date before heading off to the Match Club bar - no IP address for me today from the Pantalan Club. When I got to the bar, there was no WiFI there either - something wrong with the phone line, so I wandered up towards the dentist and met Kathy on her way back. It had been a non-traumatic extraction, thank goodness. We couldn't go into the Match Club for a beer either as she wasn't allowed to drink anything for a couple of hours at least.

The next problem was to transfer money between accounts and/or check to see if the rent has been paid in so we can pay Fernando for the outboard repair when he turns up, which meant going up town. We wandered up to an internet cafe in Santa Catalina and discovered that the rent had been paid in, then took a bus back. I went into the big chandlers which advertises itself as the authorised Garmin dealer and asked about the non-auto-initialisation problem with the 128. A guy who spoke good English spent ages on the phone then told me it was probably a software problem, not the battery, and easily fixed. The man who can may be in Las Palmas tomorrow or Thursday, in which case it should be a swift fix.

Back on the boat I finished off the Sextant module. Fernando turned up about six o'clock with a working outboard - E22 for parts and E30 for labour, not bad at all. I will put his details on the Las Palmas Marina page on BlueMoment.

Anchovy and olive pasta for tea and a game of crib. We have decided to blow E20 on joining Club Varadero tomorrow even if we are only here for three more days as I need somewhere peaceful to do some work that can only be done online and Declan recommended it as a pleasant place to work.

Weds 21st March - Las Palmas

Joined the Pantalan Club Varadero and spent virtually the whole day online or on the computer. I did also go to the Garmin dealers and ask then if they could take a look at the GPS128 and its failure to recognise where it was on startup. A guy who spoke very good English spoke to someone else on the phone for ages then told me to bring it in tomorrow - it probably needs reprogramming, he said, and he didn't think it was likely that there was anything wrong with the internal battery because it was remembering all my waypoints.

Back at the Pantalan Club I sent out a quote for a new website then wrote an article for the forthcoming Vega Association newsletter. (Installing the Beta in Fairwinds, also available in BlueMoment flavour). Somehow it was suddenly eight o' clock. . Why has Webcraft chosen this year to get so busy? (Mustn't grumble though - how many people have a job they can do from a small boat cruising the Canaries?)

Thurs 22nd March - Las Palmas

A sunnier day filled us with enthusiasm and after delivering the GPS128 to the chandlers I decided to change the oil in the engine first thing. It is not technically due for a change for another 200 hours or more, but I have decided to treat it while it is still new and shiny. It also means we shouldn't have to change it again before we get home. I used an old drinking water bottle to drain the oil into, which turned out to be a bit too flexible - we ended up with a major oil spill in the cockpit, but got it all cleaned up without any lasting damage or oil in the bilges.

Undaunted by our minor environmental catastrophe and still inspired by the reappearance of the sun I donned snorkel and flippers and swam down to check that we hadn't contacted the rocks when that mooring line came adrift on our first day here. Not a mark, but a lot of growth - especially on the prop, which of course wasn't antifouled. I cleaned along the waterline - where some of the very soft XM antifoul is now nearly all scrubbed off - and got as much of the growth off the prop as I could - will have another go at finishing that job off on another day when I fancy a swim.

After my aquatic exertions it was down to the Pantalan Club for a shower - sadly not very hot - and a half hour or so on the computer. Back to the boat for a late lunch and then we took the bus down to Vegueta to visit the Canarian Museum. This was well worth the effort. The museum deals almost exclusively with the pre-conquest culture of the Guanches, who had a thriving civilisation here before the Spanish turned up with full Papal authority for their overthrow. The locals put up a good fight though - it took over eighty years for all the islands to fall under Spanish control. Particularly fascinating is the room with all the mummies and skulls in it - a little macabre, but an amazing sight nonetheless.

We had an invitation to visit our Finnish neighbours on Esteri II, the little Maxi Magic moored beside us, so we made our way back to the marina soon after six. I have to say I had no idea Maxi Yachts made any small boats, but apparently they built about 300 of these smart little cruisers.

Esteri II has sailed from Finland to the Med then back from Greece to the Baltic before sailing down here this year. A 26ft fin keeler, she makes an even less likely ocean cruiser than Fairwinds but is nicely and thoughtfully laid out and equipped for long distance cruising. I'm afraid I can't even pronounce her skipper's name, let alone spell it, but he is an ex merchant seaman who obviously failed to swallow the anchor when he left the big ships. His wife is with him for a couple of months, but she spends some time back in Finland while he appears to have spent most of his time since leaving the merchant service living on board. We spent a pleasant hour or so chatting over a glass of red wine with them before returning to Fairwinds for a late supper.

Maxi Magic ' Esteri II'

Fri 23rd March - Las Palmas

Dinghied over to the marina ofice and paid up until Sunday night - we are planning to leave for Morro Jable early Monday morning. We then went for a quick Vega tour - there are three here - Lark (V2271), Miss Linnea (number unknown) and Liza (V634) - but no-one was on board any of them at the time.

After this it was down to the chandlers to check on the progress with the GPS - I was told to come back at seven o'clock, when hopefully it would be back in the shop. The nice guy in the shop told me the Garmin bod had said battery was knackered and we had lost all our waypoints when they changed it. Thanks guys - you would have thought they could have downloaded them and then re-uploaded them after the battery change, but obviously it was too much effort. (More on these clowns later . . .),

After that it was back on the computer for most of the day. One of our clients had just been scammed out of nearly two thousand pounds for domain names they didn't need, and I spent some time consoling and advising them. I then dealt with the email, installed a sequence of upgrades to SailRoom, the Ebay for Boats venture that I once again have a 10% stake in, and tested the bulk listing software. Oh what fun, just what you want to do when you are in Las Palmas - but let's face it, it pays the marina fees.

I didn't finish working on the PC until about seven, then we got the GPS back and took it back to the boat. It seemed to be working OK, but the Garmin person had left the language set as Spanish, had put n a six degree magnetic correction (I always use True) and had not initialised the set - the default lat/long was the Garmin factory in the good old USofA, so it took a few minutes before the poor thing knew where it was. It was late now and we were hungry, so we decided to go mad and go out for a meal. We went to a German restaurant for a steak, ordered a sirloin done medium and enjoyed the tenderest, tastiest but essentially raw steak we have had for a while. If you don't like your meat very red in the middle then in Spain order it 'buen hecho' (well done). I suspect rare still has hair and walks to your table.

Replete with raw steak we wandered back to the Match Club bar, where we fell in with a Norwegian from the Lofoten Islands. He had been in the Azores for a year refitting his boat and couldn't speak highly enough of the place. In particular he recommended Terceira, and regaled us with tales of the bull running that is apparently very big there. Praia de Vittoria is now high on our 'must visit' list - apparently the marina is new, sheltered, cheap and friendly.

Sat 24th March - Las Palmas

After lunch we took the dinghy over to pontoon 10 to see the Norwegian from last night - he had wantd to show us a book on the Lofotens, but he was not on board - or still asleep perhaps. On the way back we called in at Liza and introduced ourselves to Beule (pronounced Boiler) and his American crewman. Beule bought Liza in Sicily and pretty much taught himself to sail on the way out here. They are heading across to the Caribbean sometime in the next week. He told us a strange tale of a source of free solar panels in Isla Graciosa, so maybe we will get our solar panels sooner than we thought.

We got back on board in time to tidy up before the planned visit of our Finnish neighbours, but for some reason I decided to check to see if the GPS repeater and the interface to the DSC radio were working. They weren't, but all I had time to do was curse the Garmin geek before Urie and Iana (or however you spell their names) arrived. We passed a pleasant couple of hours blethering over a bottle or so of vino tinto. Urie was of the opinion that we would be very sheltered on the pontoon at Morro Jable, so we have tentatively gone back to plan A - Morro Jable, Fuertaventura on Monday leaving at 5am. The final decision will be made when I check the weather tomorrow morning at half past nine.

As soon as the Finns left I dementedly searched for the manuals for the radio, the GPS and the repeater while pulling the GPS and the radio from their mounts to check the wiring. It turned out that the interface mode was set to the default, which is Garmin-Garmin rather than the standard NMEA setting. Once I had got everything working I compared the repeater with the main set - it was 6 degrees adrift. Although I had set the 128 to True the repeater always gives magnetic and the main set had remembered the 6 degrees - so I had to go back into the setup menu and set the option to magnetic and the magnetic variation to zero. Finally everything seemed to be working correctly, but I have to say I am not impressed with the service from Garmin. The set was working and all set up with two hundred waypoints when I gave it to them - to give it back with the default settings and no warning was not in my view very professional,and could even have been dangerous in some circumstances.

Spag bol and a bit of a chill-out with a book later - I am currently reading Claire Francis's eco-thriller 'Requiem', which we picked up at the book swap in the pub in Puerto Mogan.

Sun 25th March - Las Palmas

Planning to leave here for Morro Jable in the S.of Fuertaventura (57nm) in the early hours of this morning to try to get through the wind acceleration zone off the S of Fuertaventura before the wind picks up as forecast tomorrow afternoon. The wind should be NNW, our course 102degT with swell forecast at less than 1.5m, so it should be a pleasant sail - but then I've said that before . . .

Rumour has it there is no charge for staying on the pontoon at Morro Jable, although there is no water or electricity either. WIth the winds forecast to stay F5 or more next week it looks as though we may be there for a while before we can make our way N into the wind up the coast of Fuertaventura. I suppose if the worst comes to the worst we can always come back here and regird our loins to go to Lanzarote from here. Watch this space . . .