Lanndfall in Lanzarote
ULA
John & Jackie Richards
Fri 10 Oct 2008 20:56
Position: 028:51.378N
013:48.900W
Ula arrived in Puerto Calero, Lanzarote yesterday
around 4pm, just over 4 days after leaving Vilamoura and today we have made the
short hop around to Marina Rubicon on the south of the island. The original
plan had been to make our landfall on the small island of Graciosa to the north
and work our way south but the weather and sea conditions were just not
suitable unfortunately.
After our last blog we continued to enjoy good
sailing, only taking the spinnaker down just before it began to go dark.
Conditions had been good enough for the crew to enjoy a small sundowner to
celebrate reaching our halfway point during the late afternoon. As we sailed
through the night the wind strength decreased and we slopped around a little on
the swell having to resort to switching the engine on at times to keep up speed.
The following morning saw John looking rather glum as he poured over the grib
files showing the wind forecast for the next two days. The forecast we received
from Meteo France via an email from Laura back home confirmed the position -
wind strengthening to 30 kts or a near gale - not good news. This appeared
to be caused by a low pressure system over Morocco squeezing the isobars of
the Azores high just west of Madeira and creating stong NE airflow down the
African coast and around the Canaries. As the morning progressed the skies
were showing clear signs of the impending weather change as the cloud cover
increased. Mid afternoon when Tim was at the helm, we hurriedly downed the
spinnaker as a squall blew through. We then sailed downwind with the genoa poled
out before the wind strengthened further and we found ourselves reefing down
three times to the third and final reef within a half hour time frame.
This heralded the start of a 24 hour roller coaster sail of force 7/8 winds
and very rough seas. We managed a hurried bowl of pasta before battening down
the hatches and switching to a two/three hour watch system. Sleeping off watch
was extremely difficult down below with the noise of the wind and waves
and the rolling motion caused by the big seas. We made our best course due
South during the night before gybing on to a course of 240 degrees towards
Lanzarote around 5.30am which in the 30knt winds we were experiencing at the
time took the best efforts of four of the crew to ensure it all happened
smoothly. Daybreak at around 7.30am buoyed up the crew's spirits as did finally
spotting land around 10am. Having seen few other craft for the whole of the
crossing Andrew spotted a large container ship when we were around 8 miles out
from Lanzarote on what appeared to be a converging course. Given the conditions
John made a call on the VHF which we surprised to have answered - yes they had
spotted us!
We were really pleased to enter through
the Puerto Calero breakwater around 4pm and once moored up enjoyed a celebratory
beer (or two!) before having a well deserved shower and a meal out in a rlocal
restaurant and crashing out for our first night's stationary sleep since
Saturday. Today has been a catch up day - a lie in, fry up breakfast courtesy of
Andrew who has taken the mantle of the Ula greasy spoon award from Tim, and a
slow day mooching around, boat cleaning and maintenance and generally
recharging the batteries.We have just enjoyed a great meal aboard courtesy of
Tim and Helen and plan a few days being tourists on Lanzarote before moving on
to Fuertaventura and Gran Canaria early next
week.
Quote for this blog
' John, how do you fancy Sierra Leone?' Tim
while we were waiting for a lull in the 36 knot gust to put in the
gybe
Jackie
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