Las Palmas, ARC minus 5
Graptolite's Sailing Log
Martyn Pickup & Heike Richter
Tue 20 Nov 2007 23:17
Tuesday and five days left until the ARC. For those of you hadn't
appreciated it, the Atlantic crossing part of this circumnavigation is a
race involving another 239 other boats. Most are here now in Las Palmas and
very prettily flying signal flags from stem to stern.
The preparations are reaching the final panicky stage and we spent most of
the day in El Corte Ingles buying food. In my opinion El Corte Ingles has to
be one of the finest food emporiums in the world. I could easily live there
and die very large. We still have fruit, veg and booze to buy and a rough
calculation of volumes makes it look like we will be sleeping on deck until
about half-way.
Had a problem with the new set of sails being to long but managed to find a
sail maker called Charlie to chop them down a bit. Visited the yacht club in
the early evening and had a swim in the excellent rooftop pool. As we are in
Spanish territory I made paella for the crew's dinner. Chicken, chorizo,
prawns, squid, mussels etc. Damn good I thought.
The problem looming for tomorrow is what costume to wear for the 'Jungle
Safari' fancy dress party. Lori has already made something out of a couple
of scraps of chamois leather. This will get her a huge amount of attention
from the lecherous crowd of salty dogs here. Even a normal day usually sees
one or two other boats luring her onboard for drinks and trying to entice
her to jump ship. Somehow I don't see the situation improving.