Stargazer of Southampton

Fuertaventura

Susie and Adam (both think they are skipper)

Thu 4 Nov 2010 18:51

We've spent a few days in Grand Tarajal, the people here are very friendly. We've been into the Chandlery for boat bits - although the shop probably usually caters for fishing boats the guys were really helpful, although we did end up explaining things to each other using Google translator on their office computer! - we have managed to find some bits that we were missing for the boat since August and haven't been able to pick up anywhere else that they have ordered for us.

Adam did his heroic bit yesterday rescuing a dog from the harbour. We were sat outside reading Adam thought he spotted some genuine wildlife in the water - looking a bit harder we saw it was actually a small dog, swimming like mad. . . it started to paddle towards our boat so we called it over, it was pretty much about to sink by the time it got to us but Adam managed to haul it out onto the pontoon where it instantly soaked him by shaking. It spent some time looking around all the pontoons before disappearing so we think it found it's boat. Hopefully it has now learnt not to jump off the boat.

We made the fatal mistake yesterday of doing some maintenance - and replacing some of the black strips between the teak in the cockpit with black silicone type stuff. . . . it's still not dry - how does anything spend 24 hours in this heat and still not dry. . . I forgot we did it this morning and managed to walk on it - luckily I noticed before spreading black goo everywhere. Fingers crossed it will start to dry or we are going to have to do a lot of cleaning up. Yesterday was also really windy and there were good waves coming into the beach at GranTarajal - we have now observed the more practiced local body-boarders and think we know where we were going wrong with our last efforts (and why so much pain was involved)

Been around the island, we went down to Morro Jable on the south tip by bus to check out the Marina since we're going to be leaving the boat for a few days for a quick trip back to the UK - decided Gran Tarajal is best. The beaches down the south end of the island are gorgeous though - big, relatively empty, white sand and very clear sea. . . . but German tourists, at least they are not naked German tourists - allegedly Morro Jable was a big naturist area but they all appeared to have their clothes on fortunately. Looks nice for anchoring for a night on our return though.

Apart from some specific resort developments that all appear relatively small compared to spain or somewhere - life on the rest of the island seems to move along at a pretty relaxed pace and there isn't really much sign of tourism - couple of shots below around the island that I took from the bus into the main town (can't really call it a city).

Little house on the prairie. . .

Windmills are everywhere - not all like this fancy old one - most of them are made of metal and like you imagine seeing in the middle of no-where in America, think that they use them to get the water from bore holes in the ground.

we think the long piles of earth on the left are fields - but suspect that we're not here at the right time of year to see whatever grows - all over the island there are ridges of earth piled to enclose areas but right now they seem to contain nothing at all.