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