Date                Friday 29 – Sunday 31 October 2010           

Friday’s activity was to get the dinghy in the water, go ashore and walk the 2 miles across scrubby desert into downtown Graciosa.  The harbour is pretty and has a regular stream of tourist boats from Lanzarotte.  The town itself could double as a set for a spaghetti western with sandy unpaved streets, low white houses and not a soul stirring in the midday sun – “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”!

Saturday saw some hard labour.  I decide to scrub the bottom of the boat to get rid of a small build up of weed and slime.  This involved firstly donning sub-aqua gear and then trying to scrub whilst maintaining positive pressure on the hull by swimming, all the time working on compressed air.  I am not sure how good this is for overall health, but I am claiming it as this week’s aerobic exercise.  Just to finish off I scrubbed the waterline but that could be done snorkelling.  The mate meanwhile was busy defrosting fridges, scrubbing heads – at least she did not have to wear a rubber wet suite for that.  All of this was finished off with a further episode of deck polishing – we are gradually working our way around the boat  There is a real issue with double handed sailing and that concerns delegation – there is nobody further down the chain of command to do the scrubbing and polishing!

Sunday morning was a little more restful and we got ashore to swim from the beach which was a pleasant change and then back to the boat for a late lunch and to prepare for a 1700 departure for an overnight sail to Las Palmas. 

As we were preparing to leave, children from the boats at anchor were being ferried around the anchorage trick or treating and a Halloween Party was setting up on the beach; unfortunately time and tide wait for no man……..