It’ Sunday here – and, the same as you, we’ve had an extra hour’s lie-in.  Though that didn’t help with the sleep pattern overnight.  We had a fairly solid night of rain, though the temperature has not dropped too much, as ever the weather has been totally contrary. At present the clouds are coming in from the West and the wind is coming in from the East!  

Anyway, all that doesn’t help with our weather forecasting.  We’re due in to Las Palmas on the 2^nd November and a friendly sailing school owner is supplying us with a decent (!) forecast today, so that we can decide exactly when we do leave here.  With the contrary weather around the islands at present, we really only want to anchor for one night in Gran Canaria as all the anchorages are potentially exposed to swell and wind, depending on which way the wind wants to blow that night!   As the islands are volcanic, most of the anchorages around here only have a few inches of sand before you hit bedrock and we need a bit more sand than that for comfortable holding whilst at anchor.  Trust me, life in the Caribbean will be a lot easier – they have good solid holding sand over there!

We have been fiddling with our email settings recently, we have been getting quite a few bits of spam mail which is costing us a fortune on satellite downloads, so if we have inadvertently not responded to something you might have sent us, do let us know.   We can go into a wifi shop and look at stuff without having to use the sat-phone as its kept for us by the service provider we use.

My (Colette’s) mobile phone will be switched off from 23^rd November and I might get hold of a local sim for use in the Caribbean (C&W will be selling them hard once we’re in ARC mode).  Tom’s mobile number does work, though its better to call it from a landline as some of the networks are not compatible with his sim.  Also, do remember, we’re quite remote here, so it does sometimes take a while for the signals to land.  

Anyway enough of the lecture, the clouds are moving along, the washing’s nearly done and we’re about to play with the impellor (don’t ask!)