Leila, Tom and I are now sat in Las Palmas Marina ready now for the start of the ARC in 15 days time. All three of us will be working for the ARC team starting on Monday, so many small jobs are frantically being done to get them out of the way, although when Richard, Dick and then Liz arrive there will be more ‘hands to the pump’ to get the boat ready. Jobs undertaken today include changing the oil in the engine and the filters on the watermaker and stowing the kedge anchor. Yesterday ‘Jerry the rigger’ checked out all the rigging on the boat, which was in pretty good order, just a few small bits to do which took no more than an hour today.

We seem a little more ready than some. One of our neighbours has not got an engine at present and has been like that since September, The local engineers assure him that the engine will be put back in on Monday, I hope so for his sake, it is cutting things fine!

There are quite a few ARC boats here already, I would guess around 60 – 80, it is hard to tell as some are flying the ARC flag but others are here with no one on board yet, we are spread out over a number of pontoons, so it is even more difficult to be sure. I will know for certain when we start work on Monday, as Leila will be checking the entrants in, I will be doing safety equipments checks, and Tom will be driving the shuttle bus around the marina.

We have already seen at least 6 boats be have met on our journey to get here, so there are some familiar faces. The weather is quite windy at the moment, with quite a big sea swell, so boats arriving at the moment, may have had a bit of a bumpy trip.

Bill Peach