MADEIRA TO LA PALMA 15TH
October to 17th October
It is 250 miles to La Palma, one of the 7 Canary Islands and
the one furthest west. To ensure we
arrived in daylight we left at 7pm which gave us 2 night passages.
It was a very uneventful trip. No dolphins, no ships, boats or anything really. It is hard to imagine when used to sailing in the solent an AIS screen that shows nothing for nearly 36 hours.
The skies devoid of a moon were filled with stars. I wish I could take a photo and share it with you. It is one if the good things about night sailing. It is truly mesmerising.
The wind in the words of our Swedish friend Staffan from Salsa "is a fickle bitch". She was well behaved for the first 24 hours where we had the opportunity to sail on a reach at a steady 6 to 7 knots. Nice and peaceful with a calm sea, either that or we are getting used to the sensation of swell. In the last 12 hours the wind has developed PMT and is sulking. She can't make up her mind which way to blow what little wind she can be bothered to. The engine has therefor been on for the last 12 hours and I suspect as our destination is only 4 hours away that it will be our mode of propulsion for the remainder of the trip. The main sail flaps annoyingly with no pressure and diesel fumes tend to linger. The boys also complain because they can't hear the DVD properly in their cabins. We are hoping that she will behave herself on our Atlantic crossing as we only have so much fuel and motoring will be a luxury.
We are now 1600 miles from Hythe knock buoy. We are around 150 miles from Gran Canaria. All our sails will now be short hops between the islands. The longest a mere 60 miles. This is equivalent to a channel crossing which we would have had to psyche up to do, now it is just a day sail.
Today we made bread and biscuits. Ethan kneaded the dough. The recipe had a single proving but I think I prefer the recipe with 2. The bread was very dense, needed more air bubbles. Oli said its texture resembled cake. It tasted ok but we can do better. The biscuits went down well.
I started my watch at 5 am and land is clearly visible as a mass of lights. We were 35 miles away so I am not sure at what distance Russ picked it up. The visibility is amazing and rumoured to be at least 45 miles. This means that when you have seen land it takes a long time to get to it. I can clearly see the arc of a lighthouse sending the beam in a great sweeping motion. It is 6 am and it will not get light until 8am which seems quite late. I guess it is only a few weeks until the clocks change. It is now getting dark at about 8pm. The weather is definitely warmer as I have not needed to dig out my socks or thermals for a watch, just trousers and a fleece.
We have chosen to go a different route to Gran Canaria than the most popular east to west. Ours is probably the less favourable due to prevailing winds, but as the trades are not yet established properly and the distances are short if we need to motor into a light headwind so be it. If we do this again we felt it would be nice to have a different route. We also thought it might be nice to re-establish our routine away from distractions of other arc boats that we will be spending 2 weeks with soon. The boys need to do some solid school work and the inside of the boat could do with a good clean.
It was a very uneventful trip. No dolphins, no ships, boats or anything really. It is hard to imagine when used to sailing in the solent an AIS screen that shows nothing for nearly 36 hours.
The skies devoid of a moon were filled with stars. I wish I could take a photo and share it with you. It is one if the good things about night sailing. It is truly mesmerising.
The wind in the words of our Swedish friend Staffan from Salsa "is a fickle bitch". She was well behaved for the first 24 hours where we had the opportunity to sail on a reach at a steady 6 to 7 knots. Nice and peaceful with a calm sea, either that or we are getting used to the sensation of swell. In the last 12 hours the wind has developed PMT and is sulking. She can't make up her mind which way to blow what little wind she can be bothered to. The engine has therefor been on for the last 12 hours and I suspect as our destination is only 4 hours away that it will be our mode of propulsion for the remainder of the trip. The main sail flaps annoyingly with no pressure and diesel fumes tend to linger. The boys also complain because they can't hear the DVD properly in their cabins. We are hoping that she will behave herself on our Atlantic crossing as we only have so much fuel and motoring will be a luxury.
We are now 1600 miles from Hythe knock buoy. We are around 150 miles from Gran Canaria. All our sails will now be short hops between the islands. The longest a mere 60 miles. This is equivalent to a channel crossing which we would have had to psyche up to do, now it is just a day sail.
Today we made bread and biscuits. Ethan kneaded the dough. The recipe had a single proving but I think I prefer the recipe with 2. The bread was very dense, needed more air bubbles. Oli said its texture resembled cake. It tasted ok but we can do better. The biscuits went down well.
I started my watch at 5 am and land is clearly visible as a mass of lights. We were 35 miles away so I am not sure at what distance Russ picked it up. The visibility is amazing and rumoured to be at least 45 miles. This means that when you have seen land it takes a long time to get to it. I can clearly see the arc of a lighthouse sending the beam in a great sweeping motion. It is 6 am and it will not get light until 8am which seems quite late. I guess it is only a few weeks until the clocks change. It is now getting dark at about 8pm. The weather is definitely warmer as I have not needed to dig out my socks or thermals for a watch, just trousers and a fleece.
We have chosen to go a different route to Gran Canaria than the most popular east to west. Ours is probably the less favourable due to prevailing winds, but as the trades are not yet established properly and the distances are short if we need to motor into a light headwind so be it. If we do this again we felt it would be nice to have a different route. We also thought it might be nice to re-establish our routine away from distractions of other arc boats that we will be spending 2 weeks with soon. The boys need to do some solid school work and the inside of the boat could do with a good clean.
In the final moments of our trip we had some excitement.
Russell spotted a man overboard. It was a teddy bear bobbing about in the sea.
We decided to test our man overboard skills and rescue the teddy. It was not
easy and we managed to lose our small fishing net trying to retrieve it. If it
had been a person they would probably have died from being poked in the head
with a boathook and being run over a few times. Finally I decided to stand on
the bathing platform and in the swell I managed to grab the bear. I also got
very wet doing it as the bathing platform was going underwater in the swell.
It wasn’t long until we were safely tied up in the marina.
First impressions very empty and very nice, with a small Spar shop that sold
the basics including cold bear. Brilliant!
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