Position at 2200  7/9/2011.  28:07.63N  15:25.49W

Yesterday we had a cracking sail from Lanzarote to Las Palmas in Gran Canaria. Bob left at 0450 to get his taxi home, so one of us was sort of awake anyway and we left Puerto Calero at 0615. It was fun in the dark dodging a fishing boat with the brightest lights you’ve ever seen; we assumed he was trying to attract fish or squid, but why he had to do it right at the marina entrance is beyond me.

So we saw a spectacular dawn break over the island, and motored out in virtually no wind. One of the peculiarities of the Canary Islands is their “wind acceleration zones”, where the wind curls round the islands and can treble the wind speed quite easily, and it all happens within a few hundred yards. So we went out cautiously, but they weren’t playing yesterday morning. For a few hours we were motor sailing, again, but eventually the wind grew and we had a cracking sail at up to 9 knots. Its 108 miles, which seems like a short hop now but would be a good Channel crossing back home. In 10 hours we covered 80nm, which is a pretty good average, although some of that was engine assisted because we wanted to get there as early as we could. The “Naughty Sail” behaved impeccably even when it had 20 knots of apparent wind occasionally, and it only took us two attempts to get it away properly.

Las Palmas is quite a big commercial port, so coming in in the dark without AIS to show us what the big ships were doing was mildly entertaining. Our passage plan showed us arriving between midnight and 0200, but we were actually tied up by 2200, so in time for a small liquid celebration.

Larry goes back to the UK on Saturday. It’s been a pleasure having him onboard, and although I’ve known him for 40 years there was always the risk that we wouldn’t be speaking after 6 weeks. But in fact his wise counsel and wide experience in all matters sailing have been a tremendous asset, and yes we are still chatting away and having fun. And although the running gag about lack of fishing prowess will doubtless continue, I have to admit that no one else is catching fish here either. In Puerto Calero they had 32 boats with about 6 men on each for their annual weekend game fishing  competition -  and between them they caught 4 fish. Apparently the water is too cold, its only 26 degrees….

So Salila will now be here till the ARC leaves on Nov 20^th. I now have a couple of weeks to get a mass of boat jobs done, including scraping acres of silicone off the decks where careless workmen smeared it in the spring. Then I have Lizzie and Penny coming out for a week each, after which I will probably come back to the UK for a short while.

Meantime I may even find out how to upload photos to the blog!