8/11/2010        Distance: 120 NM     “28.07.6N 15:25.5W”           

We hurried into the port to be there for the opening of the fuel station. First as a law obeying citizen I walked to the Harbour Master’s office. I though that  it was a stupid idea to check in as we were really there only for the fuel but there were two English guys talking without taking a breath so I never had a chance to ask any questions. At the end when my turn came up with couple of words I managed to convince the official to forget about all that paper work. He smiled at me and was relieved that he could close the office for the day. I was wondering what he was going to do for the rest of the day. As far as I could see there was nothing to do.

At 11.00 the fuel station that served all the cars and the boats in town opened and we refueled. Off we went!

It was nice to be back at sea. We became so enthusiastic that we decided to try the Parasailor. We launched it and had it up for a short time but the conditions were not suitable thus we returned to our faithful asymmetric spinnaker.

Excellent conditions, broad reach, max speed 8.4kts! Nice overnight sailing in good conditions.

We arrived to Las Palmas bay to an enthusiastic reception from the local juvenile dolphin population, around 10 animals. They must have been paid by the ARC as they stayed with us for an hour, swimming on the bow wave, disappearing in the deep to jump next to the boat to the surface again. It was fantastic! Even I managed to video them.

Our check in to Las Palmas was trouble free. I am amazed how well organized the whole event is.

This was what people call a “shake down” cruise.. Shake-down cruises are to test all your equipments before setting out on a longer journey. Most of our equipments passed with flying colours but we learnt that our battered battery pack did not hold enough power for more than one night and the failure of our mast top navigation light was disappointing. But the bow spit designed by Steve in Barcelona worked brilliantly with the asymmetric, and the DuoGen was a real winner. We also learnt that water and waste management has to be very tight during the 3 week journey. The biggest risk is loosing all our fresh water due to a pipe burst.

Flag change at the Canaries