We arrived in the canaries on the 27th of last month, sailing headlong into a force 8, at first Grand Canaria appeared as a glow on the horizon in the early morning through the wet and Saharan haze. As we still haven't fixed the automatic furler for the Genoa we had to furl manually, which takes 60 revolutions of the gear for one wrap of the sail. Taking into account that the Genoa is just 4 m square short of the main sail at 64 m square that’s a lot of winding! On approach to the marina you can really see the level of marine industry in the port with big tankers and oil rigs in dry dock side by side, big exploratory oil drilling ships tied up miniaturising everything including the 200 plus meter service vessels and cargo ships. At night these rigs in for repairs are lit up like Christmas trees.

The wind coming into the marina was really blowing even with the sails down it made it quite a difficult seamanship evolution to come alongside with the wind shoving us hard on the beam, but Derry deftly brought us in and we the crew hopped nimbly around the avocet with our roving fenders and lines ensuring that there was no hard contact. John promptly jumped ship to make friends with whoever he could find; we didn't see him again until much later in the Sailor’s bar which is obviously the first hurdle that everyone falls down at.  We've got to get a bit further from the marina the next time. But sailing is thirsty work.

First impressions of Las Palmas is that there is no planning authority, there is no real theme and you get the impression that it was all thrown up really quickly to deal with the demand during the boom time. A lot of shops and businesses seem permanently closed and there is a sense of dereliction about the place, we walked for hours around the town but could find no discernable centre or hive of activity. Just the odd mish mash of geriatric nationalities, like barnacles clinging on  in a themed English bar singing karaoke trying to keep the good times going. Not really comparable to the depth of Culture in Cascais.

Wally and Shelly came to spend the week with Donnacha and they rented a car and toured the island. Once you get out of Las Palmas though there are some interesting sights, the land is blasted and cooked by an African sun; a siesta is definitely required here because at around mid day you feel like you’re under a magnifying glass. All agriculture is done under white plastic sheeting, and there are some pretty bored looking grain fed cattle in hardpan sun baked enclosures, not even fenced in but walled in with cinderblocks. There is not a lot of growth, shrubs don't make it past waist high so all of the buildings are cinderblock or cast concrete constructions. There is evidence of the aboriginal island dwellers that were here prior to the Spanish and Portuguese explorers; they lived in caves which were dug out of the soft volcanic rock. Caves upon which the current inhabitants have put their houses! So for every house you see there is a cave underneath, in which some locals keep reservoirs for the hot summer months. A dive instructor from the nearby Bueco dive centre told us that prior to the cave dwellers there were a group of indigenous people that stayed in the centre of the island, completely cutting themselves off from the sea shunning the art of fishing and sea going altogether, sticking only to where they could grow crops in the higher regions of the island where there was a little more moisture. Also a little known fact is that the spanish called the Canaries after the feral dogs, the canines that were found on the island, not after little yellow birds.

Brian went on a dive course and once you get beneath the waters surrounding the island, a world verdant with life opens up. Shoals of Spanish mackerel nearly 2ft long swim past in there hundreds, squid sit on rocks blending in waiting for an unsuspecting snack to float by, only becoming apparent when they decide to warn you to back off in squid, which involves changing a psychedelic series of colours, before deciding to jet off at speed. Donnacha came along for the last two dives, the first being into a volcanic feature 24m down called the Cathedral, which is an apt name as we swam through a gigantic cavern made all the more otherworldly by the dark purple sea porcupines which litter the cave and the fluorescent green sponges that coat the walls like an army dpm pattern, the dive instructor satisfied his boredom of doing the dive for the millionth time by hacking sea porcupines apart with his dive knife that would make Rambo think twice. This brought in flurries of fish which fed and then followed us as we went through arches and up and around crevasses back to the boat. One unfortunate in the group curled up afterwards into the foetal position obviously not feeling great, meanwhile Donnacha and Brian happily scoffed some ciabatta and Serrano ham. The next dive was a 265 meter wreck, which broke up on the rocks outside the port after a rudder malfunction, the current was a lot stronger but happily for the lads the instructor obviously threw caution to the wind and brought Brian and Donnacha down, keen to show Brian the engine room which was scattered around the sea bed. The pistons would be as big as a man and the gears of the gearbox and prop shaft close to 6m in diameter, as you look at the wreckage of generators and pumps strewn out on the sea bed you can see what a great feat of engineering a ship is, all the materials and knowledge that goes into making them. All the more apparent is the power of the sea, which gutted and filleted this ship like a mackerel, and the corrosive action of the salt water returning the steel into its constituent parts of iron oxide and carbon, won’t be too long before it’s a red blotch on the sea bed.

Again we were eager to go after carrying out our repairs and resupply, our first day at sea was calm and pleasant leaving the canaries behind under iron sail (engine). Second was similar, with lovely paella for dinner. Third day brought an incredible fish, a Dorado or dolphin fish, just as Cian said it would be class to catch a fish both lines went spinning away on one was a bonito and the other was our dinner. The bonito proved too wily and will live to be dinner another day. The Dorado was big enough to feed the 5 of us happily. The freezer is taking it's time to come down to temperature as we get closer to the tropics, but we'll keep heading south till the butter melts or until we catch a favourable wind to take us across the pond.