Madeira to the Canaries
Audaciter
ItchyFingers
Sun 13 Nov 2011 22:55
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Hi,
Sorry for the delay in the blog but I have been in
England and the others have been busy getting drunk. Gareth, Dickon and
Gordon went on a deep sea fishing trip and Gareth caught a 55lb Wahoo!
(check pictures). A proper catch and damn good eating. The first fish of the
trip so far and it only took 3 weeks to come!
Apparently, whilst in Madeira after a heavy night
drinking the boys woke up and arranged to hire a car. Whilst Dickon was on his
way to the shower a chap came up to him and said 'you wanted to hire a car?'.
Dickon interpreted this as 'you wanted a hair cut?', said no and carried on to
the shower oblivious to anything, not even registering why anybody from
the marina office would ask him if he wanted a hair cut and not
thinking that it sounded quite like 'you wanted to hire a car' which about an
hour beforehand they had wanted to do. So he arrived back to the boat to the
sight of a very confused Marina bloke quizzing Gareth irately. Bizarre! The
second bit of Dickon genius, if you can call it that is when he was talking
to a crew of another boat about intended destinations. They were going to the
West Indies and Dickon chipped in to say 'why are you going there? We are going
to the Caribbean.' It took him a while to register, after from silence all round
that they are the same place. What the hell must they have thought of our
crew!!! I love that boy dearly but he shouldn't be left on his own. No really,
he shouldn't. Anyone who knows Dickon will understand that this is pretty
standard. Even his own Mother called him 'Satellite Delay' as a child. Spot
on.
It took 48 hours to get from Madeira to Gran Canaria
with a steady 12 knots of wind behind them. Good Sailing. Dickon saw 11 shooting
stars in one 3 hour shift, a record so far. I am
writing this on the 13th of November and the boys have been here for 2 weeks.
Catherine has been out here for a week and is going home tomorrow. We headed
down from Las Palmas to the South of the island as it is packed with people
doing the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers. So we are anchored up in a nice bay and
in the morning will be heading off to Tenerife to meet Gorgeous George, our
fourth crew member. We need to get onto a pontoon and properly clean this
boat before we set off. Hopefully we will be leaving at the latest next
weekend, via Cape Verde to get fresh produce and split up the journey. It will
take us 6 days to get there and then another 2 weeks from there, hopefully
arriving in Grenada mid December. Then we will head up to Antigua and
chill for a week or so and plan our next move.
The Yacht is behaving nicely and all problems are
being solved calmly and methodically (touching wood as saying this). It feels
very safe in her, even in heavy seas. The next part of our journey across
the pond is going to be easy sailing but mentally quite challenging, but we have
plenty of books and an Ipad to keep us busy plus lots of
sunbathing.
We are all missing loved ones dearly. There is a lot of
time to think out here!
Anyway, I will let you know when we set off to Cape
Verde. X
P.S. A big shout to Rhian, Gary, Jamie and Ruby Rose as
promised
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