We are back in “Tatt av vinden”. We arrived in Las Palmas Saturday. The first night saw us with some bad weather: Rain and wind from the “wrong” direction and a mooring line that did not quite do its job... It was a dejavue of the Swedish West Coast some bad nights in July in another year. But who cares when the sun shines. It really feels good to be back! And except for the first night the weather is better and warmer than we remember it from 5 years ago. Our program for the first few days is exploring the city and getting our “infrastructure” in place. You know: Finding the proper supermarkets, the best cappucino bar, finding the best internett cafe, cleaning the boat, washing colthes that was left over from last leg, getting the bicycles out, testing the new electroncs for the boat office, in short making every thing work. Then we are free to enjoy and explore.

 

The marina is almost full of ARC boats by now. The ARC+ starts already on Sunday for Cap Verde, and there is a combined farewell party for them and welcome party for us (who shall do the traditional ARC) on Friday. We are starting to feel the mood. Our pier has several Norwegian boats, and next to us it is one from Wales and one Danish. The Norwegian contigent this year is smaller than usual, just 16 boats. Usually Norway has been the third bigges nation here, but this year France is bigger. By far the Britsh are in the majority, and Germany number two. The ARC is more international end bigger than ever. 289 boats all toghter, 49 of them going wit ARC+ to Cap Verde where they restart  20th November. “Tatt av vinden” is number 173 ranked by length over all with its 13,72 m. The median size this year is 14,26 m. The smallest is 8,5 m. The biggest is 35 m. There are roumers that “Christian Radich” will start for Caribbean from here on the same time as the ARC.

 

Yesterday Eva and I celebrated that we had been married for 14 years. Dinner on the town. You do such things when you celebrate. But most days we prepare our food on board. It normally tastes better. Las Palmas is a nice place to celebrate. We like it here.

 

19 days to go. We think that time will pass very quickly.