Tues 7^th. Wed 8^th & Thurs 9^th Dec

Endless southerly wind have made this marina a very unpleasant experience and when the strong winds returned on Thursday we really copped a big swell and several of our dock lines parted in the big surges.

Kept ourselves busy though in our various ways with Sarah co-ordinating her highly organised provisioning schedule. It has been ‘ínteresting’ trying not only to source all the provisions but getting some stuff frozen and other stuff vacuum packed. Friday sees the final bits of the jigsaw coming together with the buying of the fresh veg from the market, where Sarah has been busy with her phrase book grooming one of the traders to give us the best stuff! Adding to the fun has been the complication of two bank holidays this week alone (Monday & Wednesday). You have to hand it to the Spanish, as they really know how to break up a working week/month.

Robert F has been an absolute hero getting any number of jobs done to his very high standards and it has been quite an education working as his assistant! I have sort of been dreading this part of the preparations as I feared what Robert F would have to say when he inspected some of my electrical installations, but so far he has not been too critical and he seems reassured that Serafina is in pretty good shape.

I think we all have had enough of this place now (and I include all the other yachts of various nationalities here) and are just dying to get off and be on our way. The wind is due to calm down a bit tomorrow and hopefully swing round a bit to the west, so with luck the big seas will subside. We have enjoyed Santa Cruz, particularly from the provisioning point of view as well as it being a busy, attractive town (with many sculptures like other Spanish towns we have visited) that  doesn’t just cater for tourists.   But sadly we have not enjoyed the marina at all.   There is practically no protection from southerly winds or seas and it gets very uncomfortable, if not downright dangerous.  There certainly is very little of the security that is supposed to be in place – we rarely see any dockside crew at all;  and the girls in the office are of a pretty surly disposition (but a view of the back of a row of containers from their office can’t help!).

Many thanks to all those of you who have kindly sent us emails wishing us well and a Merry Christmas! We have not been able to reply to everyone but we are very grateful.

Minor hiccup was the discovery that we do not have the Cape Verde Islands on any of our electronic charts which has set us a small challenge. We have a pilot book, our chart plotter has the islands in rough outline and Joyce has downloaded a tourist office App for her IPhone which along with its built-in GPS gives us a surprising amount of detail! This will certainly be a destination we enter during daylight hours. All my fault as I had not really considered that we might need the  electronic chart for Africa to get from the Canaries to Barbados!

We have struggled also with a very poor and intermittent WiFi service. It seems to work near perfectly when you need to pay for another 5 days of service, but as soon as you sign up, it dies. This has meant trips to the Cafe Atlantico to use their ‘free’ service, but there is a limit to how many cups of Cafe Con Leche one can drink. The solution has been an internet cafe that Sarah found and we are fast becoming their top patrons.

Steve from Scott-Free has meanwhile been developing quite a relationship with the city’s three chandleries with almost twice daily visits to them all. We have not been much better ourselves but I am certain that they will all be dockside on Saturday morning to wave goodbye to their best customer and new best friend! In fact they have all been very helpful and friendly and although we are constantly cycling across the city to visit them, we are mostly only buying quite small low cost items.