Graciosa N29 13 W13 30

Gryphon II
Chris and Lorraine Marchant
Sun 27 Sep 2009 07:30
We left the Salvage Islands after 2 nights and felt regret at leaving this unique place. We had an uneventful sail heading eastwards for a change, with a good beam wind that sped us slightly uncomfortably on our way, yet again we failed to see any sea life. The German couple we anchored with at Salvages had had whales close to their boat. We have not seen even dolphin since the north coast of Portugal. However, we did recover this poor flying fish specimen in the morning from our deck (it has gone into the fridge as future bait)! At least it proves that we are entering more tropical waters.
 
 9
The landfall  at dawn with Graciosa on one side and Lanzarote on the other was very dramatic.
 
 
We found a calm anchorage and caught up on some much needed sleep.
 
In the morning we saw a moon like landscape, no green just brown and orange volcanic cones of hills swirled with great flowing patterns of rock which were once flowing streams of hot lava.
 
We sailed into the next bay so that we could walk into the main town on Graciosa (this would just about qualify as a village in UK). Someone who had been there already told us it was a one horse town but we hadn't quite understood. We do now, Graciosa is like a cross between one of the Scilly Isles and a small, barren but friendly corner of Mexico with creative and artistic gardens where the garden furniture is fashioned from the products of beach combing and reclamation of just about anything! Wandering along the beach we came to the start of the houses, no made up roads here just sand streets, there are no roads on the island and all the vehicles we saw were British Land Rovers - they need them, the sand tracks are all they have.
 
The appeal of a place like this is instantaneous: totally relaxed, sparsely populated, no hassles or urgencies, the shopkeeper appeared half and hour after opening time and was surprised to see customers outside; so laid back this town is almost lying down. It is a very different world and difficult to believe that it is in the same archipelago as Tenerife and Gran Canaria. We are both very glad we came and would benefit from a longer stay but the transatlantic schedule demands otherwise!