Jur arrived  yesterday and this morning Marc would fly in but he decided to take the evening flight. He later confessed that he had forgot to bring his passport and missed his flight. That night we had a SNARC-event. All the sailors from the boats in the bay went to the beach to have a So-Not-ARC drink. That was really great. We met people from all over the world. Some of them started a trip for a year or so … 3 to 7 years ago.  It was great talking to those people and listen to their story’s. We had our own story too of course, about the rescue in A Coruna.

Just about all the jobs were done now and when the last item I ordered at the chandlery comes in tomorrow, we can set off for the final leg before the crossing. We had decided to sail to La Palma and stock up there, away from the ARC crowd. Also that would be an nice sail to let Jur and Marc get a bit used to the boat.

The sail to la Palma was great. God winds and nice weather. When we got close to La Palma we saw a pod of dolphins hunting. The marina at la Palma is owned by the same company as in Puerto Calero and evenly good! Next day, Marc and I did ‘some’ shopping while Jur and Rutger cleaned the boat and reorganized the lockers. It took us 5 hrs. to stow all the stuff! The super mercado was used to supply sailors for the crossing and they had a great service to deliver all the stuff to the pontoon next to the boat. We managed to stow 18 boxes of food, drinks and lots of other stuff, including filled gas bottles! We already talked through the plan and how we’d do watches, cooking, cleaning and stuff. We all felt very comfortable and are more than ready for it. We’d leave next day, Nov 19^th late afternoon. My youngest son would turn 19 on the 19^th and we planned a skype session to sing for him when he got back from work.

Before that, we used the afternoon to explore the Island a bit. We drove all the way up to the top, Roque was quite a drive, the road had more hairpins then any road in Switzerland. la Palma is for sure the most beautiful Island of the Canaries. Forests of pine trees palm trees combined I never saw before. Also the rocks of granite and lava were astonishing. After we came back and returned the car, we cleared the last few things, topped up the diesel and had a bite to eat and sang for Laurens, who was very pleased.

We finally slipped the lines, next stop: Tobago