28:07.716N 15:29.546W Sat 1^st Dec 2018.

Since returning to the boat after our nearly 2 months away to see family etc, we’ve moved on to Las Palmas for our winter off-period.  “Winter” is, so far, proving as good as expected, with no rain and daytime temperatures in the mid 20s with lots of sunshine.  It’s not too hot to get some exercise either.  I know some of you might be asking why stop sailing when the conditions are good to keep going all year round down here.  The honest truth is that we quite like some rest from the regular beat of sailing and berthing in new ports.  It’s good to get really under the skin of somewhere new each winter and it’s much cheaper to stop here for a while too.   Added to that is the fact that there are only 3 islands we’ve yet to explore and they don’t have 3 months’ worth of sailing in them!

This year’s statistics:

We sailed 2,765 nautical miles on 21 legs, spending 214 nights en-route.  We were motoring for 43% of the time, making last year in the Med unusually high.  We had 14 nights at sea, fulfilling the plan to do some more ocean passages, the longest of which was 7 nights.  We’ve now done just under 26,000 nautical miles in Goldcrest and nearly 37,000 miles since starting cruising 10 years ago.  It only takes 21,600 nm to sail around the world!