Arrived at the start

Lady Stardust Faro-Portugal to Barcelona - 2010
Paul Collister
Sat 2 Sep 2006 16:22
Hurrah!
 
This morning at 0600 we arrived in Las Palmas - Gran Canaria.
It took us the best part of an hour to find the entrance to the harbour as the lights were very hard to distinguish from the street lighting, also in the end we realised they were not the lights shown on the chart anyway. We danced around the entrance going back and forth, waiting for a cargo ship to go in ahead of us so we could follow him, however he seemed to want to wait for us to get out of the way. In the end we tied up and had a few hours sleep before entry formalities.
 Las Palmas Marina
 
The journey here started great with fine weather leaving funchal, however the sea soon got rough and the wind picked up, by yesterday it had calmed down and the sun finally came out. We stopped about 60NM north of here so I could jump in the ocean and have a swim, that was great fun, however the boat was determined to push on so I had to keep myself tied to it. The other namby pambies stayed on board having been put off by the shark we saw earlier.
Yesterday I tried running out a lure I had bought in Funchal, consisting of nylon wire with a imitation squid bait. While letting the line out there was an almighty tug and the squid, hook and line had all gone. an hour later , with a new bait I secured breakfast in the form of a lovely yellow fish, perhaps a small tuna.
 
Harriet is repaired and worked well for most of the Journey but let Kathy down one night due to light winds on the stern. Kathy came off watch cursing her, be warned, don't set sail with two women on board!
Yesterday was the first time on the whole trip when we could strip down to t-shirt and shorts.
 
Oh yes, we got to fly Bella, she did a great job in light winds, but what a palaver getting her up.
 
 
 
So we are now in the process of cleaning the boat up and preparing her for a lonely stopover here. We fly home on Monday.
 
Cheers and thanks for following our Journey. We will start the blog again at the start of the Atlantic crossing in mid November
 
Paul C and Crew.