More meanderings in Las Palmas
Ile Jeudi
Bob and Lin Griffiths
Tue 13 Nov 2012 12:47
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Thursday 8 to Tuesday 13 November 2012 We were disappointed to discover on the evening of
Thursday that Lin's bike had been 'nicked'. It had been locked
against some railings along with many other bikes and presumably the cable
had been cut. It was not of much intrinsic value but so useful and we have
become quite attached to them. I had a ride around the marina for a while
looking out for it but, of course, there was no sign.
On my travels I bumped into Ian and Judith from
'Zaurak' which is a Contest 48CS (a type of yacht long coveted by both of us)
who we first met in Madeira and then again in Lanzarote. They had
just returned to Las Palmas from Tenerife and will be sailing across
the Atlantic on the ARC (probably). We went out to dinner with them the
same evening and had another good time.
On Saturday we went out with Nick and Kerry from
'Mary Jo', the yacht next door who had been kind enough to let us use part of
their fridge when ours was down. We met Kerry's family who had come over
to Gran Canaria for a holiday and went to a Japanese restaurant (actually run by
Chinese who were 'diversifying'). Small dishes appear on a conveyor belt
all evening, somewhat reminiscent of the Generation Game and it was good to have
some advice from Nick who had lived for years in Japan and whose wife is
Japanese.
This had been our second visit to this restaurant
and we enjoyed it again tremendously. That is until about 3 in the morning
when Lin got up out of bed and was violently ill. This continued until
about 8 am after which Lin was washed out for the rest of the day and much of
the following day. She did start to regain her appetite on Monday
evening.
During Monday we had to move from our berth to make
way for arriving ARC boats. Most of the boats which have been moved go out
to the nearby anchorage or leave Las Palmas altogether. The Marina
kindly let us stay on the Reception pontoon so I could have easy access ashore
to the hospital in a couple of days time for the next elbow check.
Our boat at the Reception pontoon:-
 Bow to bow with a slightly larger one behind.
We are 47 ft, she is 105 ft and therefore classed as a superyacht (over about
80ft):-
 Another view of the 'superyacht'. Our mast
head is about 19 metres above sea level but it reached to a
little over half the height of the mast on our neighbour:-
 On Tuesday Juan Carlos from Rolnautic, who supplied
our fridge and towed generator, came over to invite us to the opening
celebration tonight for the ARC boats. The evening was sponsored by
Rolnautic and normally only the ARC participants can get in so it was fun to
'gatecrash' as a Rolnautic customer. There was quite an atmosphere and a
good band with tapas and drinks throughout the evening. We can see why the
ARC is so popular and how you could easily get swept up by the feeling that
comes from sharing the adventure of an Atlantic crossing with more
than 200 other boats. Anyway, we bumped into Nick and Kerry and Ian and
Judith again. Kerry and Nick got the blame for Lin's food poisoning -
Kerry because we went to the Japanese restaurant with his family, Nick because
he knows about Japanese food. That seemed justification enough to
us.
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