Friday 1st October After
our morning arrival yesterday, we had a gentle day with an afternoon siesta to
recover from the hard sail from Madeira. We had a lovely swim off the boat
and supper on board.
Saturday 2nd October We
had a late 'recovery' morning, and after breakfast blew up dinghy the
and went ashore to walk to the nearby town - well, a sort of cluster of
buildings really. It was a lovely walk across sand dunes with only the
slightest sign of pathways or tracks. There are no roads on the island -
just rough sandy tracks and a few Land Rovers to get around. Isla Graciosa
is a very small island consisting of a few volcanic cones and some lovely sandy
beaches. It almost touches the larger and better known holiday island of
Lanzarote, being just to it's NW. It is very peaceful and a magnet for
yachties like us. We have already started to meet people that we met in
other places like Porto Santo and Madeira last week. Some will be on the
ARC with us in November.
After walking to 'town', where we found a small
supermarket, we had a very long - and most enjoyable lunch and wandered
back in the afternoon to swim and have a lazy afternoon. At about 6.00pm a
dinghy from one of our neighbours came alongside and asked us to join them on
the beach for a drinks party with various Swedish crews who owned some
Swedish-built boats. Well 'Catou' is Swedish-built too, so we were
invited, but the ladies declined so Terry and I were forced to go alone to
represent the British contingent! A very enjoyable evening, but we had
trouble (1) finding the dinghy in the dark somewhere along the beach and (2)
finding 'Catou' in the bay amongst the other anchored boats! We eventually
made it back aboard.
