Thursday and time to move on we’ve been here just over a week, we’ve seen the island and got our radio from England. Having handed back the hire car and paid the marina we fuelled up and left about 11.00. Easy sailing down alongside the island with a good wind to start with. Its about 40 miles to Puerto Rosario the capital of Fuerteventura which is set around a commercial port with no marina but room to anchor. Needless to say the wind died on us in the afternoon and as we didn't want to enter an unknown port and anchor in the dark we ended up motoring the last few miles. The best thing about the day were the dolphins. First while Phil was steering were three large ones leaping across in front of the boat.  He couldn't work out what type they were as they only leapt once then went and joined the rest of their group swimming away and probably feeding. Later a number of smaller ones came and swam with the boat for about 15 minutes cruising just under the bow. A lovely sight.

We made it into Rosario in daylight and anchored at the entrance to an artificial bay which has some moorings in it and a number of other boats. As has happened a couple of times down here the navigation lights did not agree with the chart  and neither did the exact layout of the port therefore a night entry would have been interesting!

There was  a bit of swell coming into the bay so it was going to be a disturbed night with the boat rolling. we had seen that a dredger was working in the port area slowly moving in and out and Sarah said “ that she hoped it only dredged in that area”. Well it did but at 02.30 we were woken by the noise of engines very close, the dredger was about 50 metres astern of us. It connected up to a floating pipeline and commenced discharging its load of dredged sand to the beach. This seemed to involve pumping it out as a slurry with loads of water and took ages, as it was so close we sat on deck drinking tea and watching.

Friday. We should probably have gone ashore today and had a look round but it really did not look very inviting so we were up early and set off south again, this time heading for Gran Tarajal a port with a marina, said to be the most welcoming marina on the island. Well after fast sail down here we came in and moored, good pontoons and plenty of space for manoeuvring, electricity and water as expected  and all for the cost of about 12Euros a night - about £9, and a free music festival thrown in. There is a Womad festival here for three days. We've never heard of it but apparently there are a number of these around the world and they are well known.