Hi Folks,

We are still here at this anchorage on Sal in the Cape Verdes, experiencing 30 to 40 knot winds for two days straight! It is good holding, but the strong trade winds just blow right over this low lying island, and so we are just sitting here getting caught up on my logs, reluctant to launch Sprite to go ashore in this wind driven sea. At least it keeps our wind generator going, producing 10 to 12 amps in 40 knot winds, more than enough to keep our batteries charged up with our refrigerator, watermaker and inverter running. I have to concede, my reservations about Judy wanting to re-install the wind generator were groundless, as it is coming in handy in these strong winds.

Judy is just laughing at our pilot which says that wind speeds of 35 knots or more occur on average only four times a year and are unknown between July and January … Hah! Our sail down from the Canaries was in 35 to 40 knots all the way over a five day period and it has been blowing 30 to 35 here for the past 48 hours! We averaged over 150 nautical miles a day every day in our passage down here. I hope our crossing will not be so heavy.

This log takes us back to Gran Canaria to get some expensive equipment replaced.

We are safe here in spite of the wind, and are thankful we have good ground tackle to hold us securely in these strong winds.

All the best,

Aubrey

Log #38f Back to Gran Canaria

November 4, 2005: we reluctantly returned 45 miles from Tenerife to Porto Mogan on Gran Canaria, dropping anchor off the marina (27 48.98N, 015 45.70W) as there was still no room inside. Because of the roll we experienced last time here, I set a stern anchor, allowing us to ease the uncomfortable swells. In we went to Sunshine Maritime with our PUR 35E Power Survivor watermaker to see if it could be repaired. While there we picked up some antifreeze to replace that lost when our hose broke while leaving Santa Cruz de Tenerife a few days earlier. When we replaced it, we noticed our engine water pump was leaking. This has caused us problems several times before and we had overhauled it at least three times. We were missing the seals from our spare parts, and ordered them from Sunshine Marine. We would have to wait a few days for them to come in.

We were to spend 10 more days here in Puerto Mogan waiting for a variety of parts which had to be ordered in. The seals were just the first. We were informed the PUR 35E was dead, and probably could not be fixed without a long delay to send it to Switzerland or even the home factory in the US, and then no guarantees. We needed a reliable watermaker and so ordered a new PowerSurvivor 40E from Sunshine Marine. They were going to expedite the order and it should be here in two or three days. Good!

However, next morning we went over to a British boat to trade books, and when describing our water maker problem, the skipper said he had a PowerSurvivor 35 E which was new when he bought the boat seven years ago, but has not been used since. He would be happy to get it operational and sell it to us at less than half the price of a new one. A new one will cost us 2595.00 Euros ($3600.00 Canadian). Wow, I wish we had known this the day before. Could we cancel the order until we had a look at this used one and had it operational? Judy was reluctant to cancel the order for our new one, but I was in favour of at least checking out this used one. Could Sunshine Maritime cancel the order, or was the watermaker already in transit? At Sunshine Maritime we found out from Mike and Mayla that the watermaker had already been shipped out. To cancel and return it would incur the two way shipping charges, and a lot of hassle. Mayla would have co-operated as they needed a watermaker for the London Boat Show, and they might use the one shipped. We (mostly me) anguished over whether or not to cancel the order, and in the end went ahead with the new watermaker, out of a sense of obligation to Mike and Mayla, and a concern that the used one might still present us problems at a later stage; thus the expense and reliability of a new one under warrantee was worth it. Had we heard about this used one first I probably would have gone for it if we had installed it and had it working well. The new one was delivered in two days and was installed and working well.

The next problem was our engine water pump. When we removed it we distorted the axle fitting as the pump was corroded, and we forced it too much in trying to loosen it. Damn, that probably meant a new pump unless we could get the fitting bent back into shape. It also meant that we had no water pump or ability to use the engine until it was fixed or replaced. At anchor this is a far more serious situation, as we have no way of turning on the engine to recharge our batteries, and if the anchor ever started to drag we would have no way of motoring to safety. We spent a frustrating day on the bus, 2 hours going up to Las Palmas at the north end of Gran Canaria to several chandleries to see if we could get the pump fixed or a replacement set of seals for it. One chandlery gave us the seals free of charge as it was such a small item, but had no new water pumps in stock. Two other chandleries were no longer at the locations advertised in our Pilot. We had Sunshine Maritime order us a new engine water pump.

We leaned on the officials in the marina for a place inside because of our precarious situation. They found us a spot for two nights which we immediately took. I was able to bend the fitting back to operate, but the pump still leaked like a sieve and we were unsure how long it would last under load. It worked well enough for us to motor in to the marina. Here we had shore power and did not have to use the engine to charge our batteries each day. After the first two nights, we were relocated to another marina mooring where we could stay for a few more days.

Puerto Mogan on the southwest corner is on the diametrically opposite side of Gran Canaria from Las Palmas. None the less, it is a pleasant resort town with all the amenities, including the good chandlery of Sunshine Maritime, good supermarkets, a good hardware store, car rentals, bus service, many restaurants, including a couple of Chinese ones, a DVD rental store where I took out a temporary membership, a good internet source where we could not only send E-mail and picture attachments, but also had the digital maplets of our voyages printed and plasticized, and English newspapers available at several outlets. The marina was reasonably priced, costing 14.60 Euros a night plus water and electricity for a total of 16.69 Euros per day for our 10 metre boat. The camber was the centre of the resort complex with stores and restaurants all along the waterfront and a plaza where a Dixieland jazz band had a concert each night. Christmas decorations were displayed in several restaurants as well as from the balconies of the resort apartments. A couple of times I went ashore in the evening to pick up a pizza for a late night snack. Across the camber were fishing docks and the Yellow Submarine submersible sightseeing boat. We watched it submerge and surface several times when we were out at anchor. The town and marina (when space is available) are good, and the anchorage has good holding but is rolly.

Three days later, good news from Sunshine Maritime, our new water pump was in at the dealer in Las Palmas. We did not want to wait another day or two for it to be delivered down here to Puerto Mogan and so rented a car for a day to go up to Las Palmas to pick it up. On the way up the four lane autoroute, we passed many other resort communities on this barren east coast, past the airport and wind farms containing hundreds of slowly turning wind generators. The dealership in Las Palma was very co-operative, and put on the old mounting bracket so it would fit back on our engine, gave us a spare impellor and a 10 percent discount thus costing us “only” 400.00 Euros ($560.00 Canadian). As we got there in the morning we decided to take the long way back and drove up through the centre of the island to Caldera de Bendama for a fantastic panoramic view over the verdant crater and north of the rim to see Las Palmas spread out before us. On upwards to Tejeda, a small mountain village where we had lunch, and I bought a warm Ecuadorian llama wool cardigan, as I was wearing only shorts and a short sleeved shirt. The mountain air was quite a bit cooler than the coastal region we were used to. We continued up to Pico de las Nieves (Mountain of Snows) at a height of 1949 metres. The interpretation centre there was not as good as others we have been to, but it had a spectacular view over the lower mountains and valleys, including Roque Nublo, a dramatic volcanic core, the image of which is used for the symbol of Gran Canaria, as well as other peaks dominating the mountain range. (A volcanic core is the lava core of a volcano after the exterior material has been eroded away.) From there we went along the spine of the mountains with grey foggy clouds surging up the windward side, and clear visibility on the leeward side. Back down to Puerto Mogan, we returned the car late afternoon, installed the new water pump, and were ready to leave next day.

Next day, after expressing our thanks again to Mike and Myla at Sunshine Maritime for their help, and picking up a few last minute supplies, we set off at 1500 for La Gomera, a 78 mile overnight passage. We motored the first couple of hours, crossing over towards the southern tip of Tenerife when the wind started to pick up, allowing us to sail using the genoa only. As the wind increased to force 7, gusting up to 35 to 40 knots, we reefed the genoa still doing over hull speed, about 6.5 knots. It was very heavy going, and we were facing the channel between Tenerife and La Gomera down which the wind would funnel in an accelerated fashion. There are several acceleration zones around the Canaries where the winds increase by 15 to 20 knots as they howl down the channels between the islands or through the mountains. The south ends of the islands through which we were transiting are notorious for these acceleration zones, as we were finding out.

As we were nearing the southern tip of Tenerife we decided to head in to Los Cristianos to anchor rather than pounding northward across the channel to La Gomera. At 0200 we were in a bit of a lee and anchored just outside of the green starboard buoy at Los Cristianos (28 02.67N, 016 42.78W). Night entries into unfamiliar anchorage areas are … interesting. On this moonless night we had to avoid floats from a fish farm just outside, stay outside of the main channel for the ferries to come in, but avoid unlit boats at anchor and the rocky shoals at the outer end of the harbour. Lots of fun! But at last we were anchored and able to have a good sleep. In the morning we were able to see where we were anchored at the far end of the harbour, and could have gone in closer. However, a sad sight greeted our eyes in the form of a ketch up on the rocks, blown there when it dragged its anchor in Storm Delta a couple of weeks earlier.

We didn’t bother going ashore, but left at 1100 to motor the remaining 22 miles, saluted by a pod of four pilot whales, across to San Sebastian on La Gomera (28 05.33N, 017 0.58W), one of our favourite towns in the Canaries.

 



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