At present, things look good for the Cape Verdes in a couple of days. We will be out of touch for at least eight days of the passage plus whatever time it takes to make up another log and get to an internet café to send from there.

We received nice Christmas, holiday and New Years E-mail greetings from several of you, thank you very much. We wish you all a Happy New Year and will be in touch in 2006.

All the best,

Aubrey


Log #38C Gran Canaria to Tenerife

We left the pontoon of the unfinished marina at Morro Jable (28 03.06N, 014 21.82W) after supper alongside at 1815, just after sunset Nov. 8th, for an overnight passage of 73 miles from Fuerteventura to Gran Canaria. Once in open water, the winds were a comfortable 18 knots from the north, allowing us to sail for four hours before dropping to a light force 3, about 7 knots, when we put on the engine and motor-sailed for a couple more hours. By 0130 the wind picked up again, allowing us to sail the rest of the way, but causing us to reef our genoa by 0415 in brisk 25 knot winds. We anchored off the entrance to Pasito Blanco (27 44.84N, 015 37.24W) on Gran Canaria at 0700, just before sunrise, and slept for a few hours before entering this private marina.

From the fuel dock we were directed down a long narrow channel with boats Med moored both sides to a slip near the end where they indicated a marinero (dock hand) would be there to help us in. Judy had been told there were no lazy lines and we would have to use our stern anchor, a real pain, especially in the narrow confines of this marina channel and the high risk of fouling the anchor on whatever lines were on the bottom.

As we motored down the channel, the wind increased to a brisk 15 knots from astern, making maneuvering a more hazardous task. There was no one on the dock, and we couldn’t see an open spot as we approached the end of the channel. We had to stop and back up the 200 metres towards the fuel dock, as we called the office on the VHF. We were informed that a hand was going over now and should be there shortly, and so we ventured back down that windswept channel, again trying to identify where we were to go in.

A hand was on the dock ready to receive us and so the delicate operation of dropping our anchor sufficiently upwind, keeping enough way on to maneuver between the two adjacent yachts without ramming into either of them or the dock, using reverse engine, and holding on to the stern anchor line so it set and helped keep us off the dock in the 15 knot crosswind. Whew, we made it OK, and then we were handed a lazy line to also hold us off! I thought there were no lazy lines??? It would have been so much easier if I had known there were lazy lines to use! Now our stern anchor was out, and probably fouled on the other underwater lazy lines and stern moorings. Aaaarrggghhh!

It was a miscommunication when Judy was at the office asking if there were stern lines to use, and the answer was “No”. However, she meant a stern line when we come in bows to (i.e. A lazy line), whereas the office probably thought she meant stern lines on the dock as most boats come in stern to. So a major difficulty was experienced in coming in, and later a heavy job freeing the anchor fouled by underwater lines. Oh well, “If you can’t take a joke…”

Pasito Blanco is a private marina belonging to an affluent gated community, remote from any local town. We had to get up to Puerto Mogan to Sunshine Maritime, a Katadyne (PUR) watermaker agent, hopefully to get our PUR PowerSurvivor 35 repaired. There was no room at the marina in Puerto Mogan, or at a couple of other marinas contacted on Gran Canaria. They were all filled up, especially with ARC boats getting ready for their departure on Nov. 20th. At the office we had a taxi called to take us over to Puerto Mogan, an expensive, long, 30 Euro ride one way. We left the watermaker with Sunshine Maritime, and would return in a couple of days to pick it up, hopefully repaired. The British owners, Mike and Mayla, were quite helpful and indicated the shallow bay outside Puerto Mogan Marina had good holding and we could anchor there. We returned via local bus to Playa Inglese, and caught a more economical taxi from there back to Pasito Blanco to leave next day. One aspect we liked about Poasito Blanco was they had WiFi coverage for the marina and we were able to send E-mail directly from Veleda. Happiness is…

Leaving early afternoon next day we motored southwest, into light headwinds but two metre seas. Rather than pounding into those seas all the way to Puerto Mogan we dropped anchor at Puerto Cementero in a shallow bay partially protected from the SW winds and swells. When I use the word “shallow” I am not referring to water depth, but to the fact the “bay” is just a slight indentation of the shoreline, with over 140 degrees of exposure to open water, making for a poor roll-y location. We were surprised at the SW winds as the predominant winds are from the NE to the NW. Oh well, Murphy’s Law!

Puerto Cementero is just what it sounds like, a port for large ships going in to the cement factory with dust blowing down on us for several hours. We spent a roll-y night there before heading of to Puerto Mogan early morning to anchor outside the marina there at 1030. The town is a nice tourist resort. We were able to take Sprite into the marina to go over town shopping, internet, and to Sunshine Maritime for our watermaker. It was working on the bench, and so we paid for the labour of checking it out, and reinstalled it in Veleda, assuming the problem was in the hoses. We cleared some twists in the hoses, and barnacles out of the intake through-hull fitting, and the watermaker functioned. We stayed at this roll-y anchorage for four days, running the engine an hour each day to keep the batteries charged up, as the wind generator could not produce near enough power for our refrigeration (an ongoing disagreement between Judy and me). However by the fourth night I was so infuriated at the heavy rolling we were doing in this anchorage that I insisted we leave immediately at 2230, as I would not spend another rolly night in this exposed anchorage. The holding was good, but the rolling was horrible. We took off for a 50 mile overnight passage, an uneventful motoring trip to Tenerife.

The pilot book indicated an anchorage north of the main harbour in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, but as we checked out the area, it was all commercial, cruise ship and ferry docks with no area suitable for anchoring. The Canaries have very few good anchorages and we are forced into marinas in most locations over here. We made our way down to the south harbour and into Marina del Atlantico, passing a couple of tall sailing ships on the wall outside the marina. We were escorted into a bows-on mooring on the pontoon along the inner wall (28 28.06N, 016 14.65W). When we asked for the lazy line, we were instructed to just raft off the boat alongside our port, so the two of us were attached to one stern line. OK, we did so and then crashed for a couple of hours undisturbed sleep.

The marina had many foreign yachts, British, American, French, German and other northern EU countries. We saw several boats we had met before, especially Glenlyon with Rod and Susie on board. We came across the Atlantic at the same time as them in 1999, meeting them from Bermuda, the Azores, in Brighton, the Medway, London, Paris, Turkey, Rome, and now here in Tenerife.

Our batteries seemed to take longer to charge up, and more rapidly dropped the charge rate of the engine alternator to lower and trickle charges. When we checked them with a hygrometer, the levels for all cells were in the white range indicating problems. They were almost 8 years old and did not owe us anything. Since we were preparing for our Atlantic crossing, we decided to replace them rather than risk problems charging them en route. We were able to order, and have delivered the next day, four golf cart batteries each having 225 amp hour capacities at six volts, more than double our old 110 amp hour ones. The two pairs are set up in series, then linked in parallel (each pair in series at six volts give us 225 amp hours at 12 volts) thus giving us a total of 450 amp hours of power. However the cost of 950 Euros (about $1500 Canadian) was another major expense for us.

(Ed note: see Paul Shard's new "Costs of Cruising Today" article)

There were so many cruising boats in Santa Cruz that a morning VHF net was set up, and a pot luck American Thanksgiving supper was also enjoyed by many of us boaters. We liked the city of Santa Cruz, and were within easy walking distance of an extremely good market, several large grocery stores, internet cafes, and well stocked chandleries; as well as a large modern Museum of Nature and Mankind, and an interesting military museum featuring an excellent diorama of Nelson’s unsuccessful attack on Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797 in which he lost his arm (see above picture from the museum).

Glenlyon and Veleda rented a car for three days and toured the entire island. More about touring Tenerife and Storm Delta that hit the Canaries in my next log.


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