LIFE IN LAS PALMAS
Persephone... Cruiser/Racer
Nigel & Karen Goodhew...
Sun 18 Nov 2012 22:56
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Las Palmas is a bustling city. Half or more of the
population of Gran Canaria live here and someone said that it is the 9th largest
city in Spain. We can believe it.
The shopping is good, the beers are refreshingly
inexpensive and the local folk seem universally delighted to see
us.
The Atlantic Rally for Cruisers team are getting
into full swing with nightly sponsored drinks get togethers, so we are meeting a
good number of our fellow ARC'ers as the social scene gathers pace. Nigel
travelled back to London for a few days almost as soon as we arrived, but
returned on 10th November to start the Atlantic prep.
We seem too be fairly well prepared compared to a
number of boats and the job list is reassuringly short as far as Persephone is
concerned. Some small rigging issues and polishing / cleaning etc are about as
bad as it gets for us, while others have communications issues, self steering
issues etc....there have even been welders working on boats on our
pontoon!
On Monday, we had our RORC scrutineering session
and a couple of shopping items came out of that...some additional red flares and
some extra reflective tape for the lifebelt was required.
The ARC organisers arrange seminars and forum
sessions to deal with interesting topics like weather routing, setting up a
sextant, provisioning etc. and we are attending a number of these.
All is going well, though we are rather concerned about the last of these,
with our standard fridge we are worried that fresh foods and meats will not last
well. The local butcher can deep freeze and vacuum pack beef and says we will be
able to keep it 10 days or more. Other meats might need using faster. We
are planning for up to 21 days as far as food is concerned so "fresh" meat will
feature in our diet for the first half of the crossing.
The marina is filling up steadily now we are in our
second week here. The various livaboard families who populated our pontoon when
we arrived, have been moved on and seemed resigned to that fate with grace.
Their places have been taken by an eclectic group of yachts, from well known
Hamble based race yachts (dare we include ourselves in that caegory) like Quokka
, Scarlet Oyster, Selene and others. An international cruising clan is also well
established. Lots of Norwegians, including our next door neighbour, Bjorn in his
pogo 40.
We met up with Janet and Paul from Mathilda,
and were enthusiastically greeted by Peter and Christene Tanner (Oohjah, J122),
whom we last saw in April in Hamble when we were both fitting our
watermakers.
Today, Nigel took up the opportunity to sail in a
Vela Latino, these are local racing boats, based on 19th century open
fishing boats, powered by a single lateen sail, not dissimilar to those seen on
dhows on the Nile. This was huge fun, working with the spanish speaking
crew, and we won the short race, of course.
The boats are beautifully prepared, with
magnificent paintwork and racing uderwater finishes...it would be a real treat
to see them all out racing in earnest.
Tomorrow, Michael arrives...we just hope that he
and the others have not left it a little late to enjoy all the pre ARC social
agenda to the full. One week to the off!
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