More meanderings in Las Palmas

Ile Jeudi
Bob and Lin Griffiths
Tue 13 Nov 2012 12:47

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.