Las Palmas, Gran Canaria 18 November - 10 January

Arriving 18 November, at anchor outside.

We saw the ARC leave on the 19th, some 180 yachts. 

20th we checked in and ended up at T pontoon, probably stands for Transit, nobody wants to stay here.

14 (yes 14) was used to keep our 26 ton yacht safe. 

Really bad swell and a long long way to the lousy toilets. Happy we have our folding bikes.

Las Palmas and Gran Canaria and the Canary Islands has been an overall very nice experience.

Sailing around the islands and exploring by sea and land. Nice, very nice.

Sara (our youngest daughter) & Alex visited us. They love Sans Peur and Sans Peur loves them.

Gretes brother Bent was also onboard for some time.

The main reason we stayed in this marina (which we don't like at all) although it's cheap. 

Run by the Canary "government", it's a total fuck up. Mismanagement is one word to use.

Idiots is another ... and there has been many many more words used. We gave up early on them.

BUT in order to get your yacht ready and provisioned for the crossing you need to stay here.

And Las Palmas, big city 600.000 inh, has a lot to offer.

And the TO DO list was scary long.

Slowly we have been ticking of item by item.

The major project was to change the whole standing rig.

Alisios did a fantastic work. In just 3 days the changed the whole standing rig. 
So now we should feel much safer, but we felt very safe before as well, nothing wrong with the rigg.

This is all about insurance companies policies and modern cheap shit charter yachts (Bavaria, Hanse etc).

Anyhow in order to get a decent insurance at a reasonable cost we needed to change all our stainless steel wires.

11 in total. 

And this one , the forestay caused most problem. Long and heavy.

Domingo was a really nice guy. We felt very comfortable with him ... especially after that we got to know that he participated in 5 Americas Cup.

This is a another nice guy. A sailor. A Viking (although American). He saved us. Volvo Penta managed to really fuck up ... and in a very bad way.

Alternator was serviced and then we thought it was a good thing to have "pros" to install it again, checking everything. The totally fucked everything up and gave up nothing was working anymore. They just left!!!! Is this real???

After that it took us almost two days to get things working and rewired again. 

There was a lot of swear words involved.

James finally managed to figure out how it should be wired. A true sailor mate and our  hero of the day.

He is also participating in our small armada of Viking Explorers, about 10 boats has already left for Cape Verdes.

Tomorrow we will also leave together with 3 more yachts. 

Preparations all over the boat. 

Roberto our very very good friend joined us on the 17th of December and has been a been a part of all our preparations since then. 

This day it was Mr Perkins (he is a true soul mate) who got all the attention.

New filters, diesel and oil, plus change of oil, motor plus gear box.

A bit of Christmas feeling on the jetty together with other Vikings.

This is Mads on Looma. He's a Dane adventuring with Lotta from Sweden.

They took of yesterday.

There has been a lot of nice encounters all over the island.

Among one is the Mercados. There are three of them in the area. 

Everything is there. Amazing.

And we just love the the new kind of tapas, but they look more like pinchos, and they wine they serve buy the glass ... wow!

Although Gran Canaria is very very touristic at some places there are plenty of places to enjoy.

We will always remember our tIme here. 

It's a good place to be, specially for a sailor, enjoying and preparing for the next big step and adventure, The Atlantic Crossing.

All of us, Grete, Roberto and Fred is eager and ready. S/Y Sans Peur has never been in better shape.

Tomorrow is a BIG day.

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