Madeira to Lanzarote

Weyve
Kev and Jan Sherwood
Wed 30 Sep 2020 15:36

30:52.136N   15:09.062W

 

 

It’s now Wednesday 30th Sept and we are on our way to Lanzarote having left Quinta Do Lorde on Madeira at 11.00 yesterday. We were both sad to leave as we have had a fantastic month on Madeira . Firstly , I can’t praise the marina staff highly enough – Joana was brilliant at sorting anything you needed such as car hire , permits etc and the guys on the pontoons were just so helpful , always there to take your lines , advice on places to visit and even bringing hot  fresh bread to the boat every morning.

The Madeiran people are lovely too ,  have been hit hard by the virus lockdown but don’t seem any the less cheerful because of it.

 

 

We met some really nice people from other boats , Rolli and Connie – a German couple on a Bavaria 40 called Chaaya , and a lovely gent called Bill who only learnt to sail last year and has bought himself a Westerly Oceanlord and is sailing singlehanded , on his own , with no one to help at the age of 70+ . What a hero.

As it happened we all left at about the same time and all heading for various ports in The Canaries so of course no one mentioned anything about a race ( didn’t even occur to me !!) .

As you can expect Jan and I got off to a very bad start in our “not race “.  Only just outside the marina and whilst bringing down and stowing our second foresail , which we’d set up ready for a stonking down wind sail only to discover that it was going to be a reach all the way , when I noticed our spare halyard which is normally hanked to the topping lift position on the boom had let go and was doing a maypole dance around the wind generator.

Once it finally untangled itself it then leapt about just out of reach like an Aussie on a bungie.We finally got that sorted and casually set off in hot pursuit of Bill who for some strange reason was taking a very wide course away from the Desertas. Not us , straight line sailors we are , some 2 hours later when we had pulled out what would have been a considerable lead , had we been racing , the effect of being on the westerly side of a bloody great range of mountains running NW/SE when the wind is blowing from the NE became only to apparent.

I blame this on Janet who wanted to see the islands even though we couldn’t visit. This is what I will tell the others was our plan all along.

 

It would appear  that there is yet another weather system bearing down on us from the north which it means it will most probably be a dodgy anchorage when we arrive and give us a difficult journey onwards to the canaries so sadly , despite having all the necessary permits we are going to head straight to Marina Rubicon on Lanzarote then decide what to do from there.Had a fantastic sail last night with 15 -18 knots though this morning has been fairly tame but gave us a 24hr run of about 140 miles .

 

Should be in Rubicon lunch time tomorrow so will Whatsapp you all then.