We are now in Las Palmas, Gran Canarias, having finished the second leg of our circumnavigation. Beans and the Botties have flown home and I have been left in charge of composing this next chapter of the ‘Lonely Boat Guide’ to the World. As you will remember we left Essaouira, Morocco at dawn on Thursday 6th, for the 225 mile crossing to Isla Graciosa, which is a small island off the north coast of Lanzarote. The main attraction for going there was that it’s a National Park, has one of the most beautiful bays to anchor in and has a challenging narrow channel between the two islands called Estrecho del Rio, with very steep cliffs on one side and four volcanic cones on the other.

Well the day started well we managed to get ‘Big Red’ up again. All was going well until night set in and the winds built and the sea swell from the Atlantic started to kick in, making everything very ‘rolly polly’. Nothing to worry about but enough to have Beans digging me in the ribs all night shouting “I hate you Powell!”. So our romantic dawn watch wasn’t very romantic after all, life’s full of disappointments :-)


Willie on a rather ‘rolly polly’ but dramatic night watch. See tanker on horizon.


    
I promised you warts and all, confession time......  I’ve torn ‘Big Red’ again!! Hopefully not too serious this time but it was entirely my fault, having entirely too much fun I pushed it a little too hard and paid the price. He’s in ‘hospital’ now hopefully getting fixed.

In a quieter moment, David ‘I am a fisherman’ Botterill pretends to fish and after a rough night Beans regains her sense of humour.


.

We ‘goose winged’ down the Estrecho del Rio with the NE Trade wings funnelling in behind us until we arrived at Playa Francesa for the night.

This rest of the trip into Las Palmas was fairly uneventful apart from.............




Botti’s first Dorado, perfect sailing conditions and dolphin for that romantic moment on the bow.

We arrived in Las Palmas right on schedule, and all in one piece, I love it when a plan comes off.

Thank you Willie & Botti for a fantastic two weeks of fun and adventure, it was a real joy having you onboard.

We are now just over four thousand miles into our journey, only another 54,000 nm to go. Most of our trip so far has been about going south into warmer climes, well now we are starting west towards the Caribbean with the first stop being Las Palmas for the start of the ARC. (Atlantic Rally Crossing), then St Lucia.



UHURU heads West, the Caribbean beckons. Bob Marley here we come.


How’s the weather at home? ......... Sorry. :-)

Love to all

Steve & Beans


Las Palmas, Gran Canarias. 10th November 2008


PS Sorry the Tracker is not working at the moment, it will be fixed soon.

Steve Powell (Owner/Skipper)
UHURU of Lymington
steve {CHANGE TO AT} uhuru {DOT} mailasail {DOT} com
Mob: +44 7774 423 449
Boat Sat Phone: +870773150353

To track UHURU
go to http://www.marinetrack.com/

Log in using

User name: UHURUFriends
Password: 123456  (The world’s favourite password)

Then double click on the boat icon and it will take you to another map which shows you where we are. Usual zoom tools etc,. If you hold the cursor over the icon you will see boat speed and direction. If you want to see where we have been over the last few days go to the 'Tracker' tab and adjust the date range to how ever far back you want then refresh.

PS Sorry the Tracker is not working at the moment, it will be fixed soon.
-