Ready to depart Gran Canaria ….. December 2011

25 November – 13 December 2011

We have now been in Las Palmas at anchor for nearly 3 weeks, heavens only knows what we have been doing besides daily trips to the supermarket and fresh market.  I know that there will be shops in the Caribbean, but while its here and while there is room in the lockers it seems like such a good idea to stock up, and up, and up while the boat goes down, and down and down!!!!

We shared a car with our Australian friend Tony on Tactical Directions on Saturday and went inland for a days touring and incorporated another supermarket and electrical store run.  Our rather new (well only 4 years old) microwave suffered an incurable broken latch on its door last week, which put it into total shutdown mode.  We don’t use the microwave much, but we are leaving 240 volts territory and heading to 110 volts land so if we don’t replace it now it will be a long time before we can, so it was added to the shopping list.  Our little Nissan Micra hirecar was absolutely bulging at the seams with provisions for 2 boats, the 4 of us and the microwave.   I was just looking at all the food receipts from the last 3 supermarket trips and we have purchased over 200 items, the lockers are bursting and I have become an absolute ace at stowing, I have also had enough sense to write an inventory of what is where, all we have to do now is remember to delete items as they are removed!!!

We enjoyed our days touring with Tony and his English friend Lyn, we went inland high up into the mountains and discovered a totally different landscape to what we have seen on the other Canary Islands.  There is much more vegetation here, everything looked very autumnal with trees shedding their leaves, and the low hanging mist made us feel we could quite easily have been driving through English countryside.

Yesterday our friend Tony Knight arrived, after a long trip via Korea and Germany from New Zealand.  He has come to sail across the Atlantic with us and it is great to have him onboard again.  The weather forecast was looking good to depart this morning and we were on red alert for a mid morning departure……. but then the weather was checked again.  The Azores High is pushing a band of stronger winds and lumpy seas across our path in a couple of days so we will be patient and wait it out, tucked up comfortably here at anchor in Las Palmas.  We are getting extra weather help from our English friend John Bowering who will be tracking us along the way and emailing us the bigger picture and his advice which we value.  Thanks John. 

While we are at sea I can not update our position map on this blog but we have started a blog tracking map we can update via the Mailasail website through our satphone.  If you want to see where we are and how our progress is going out there in the big blue wobbly stuff click here or visit www.blog.mailasail.com/yachtbalvenie (both go to the same place)  it’s an excellent facility designed for yachts worldwide.  The link is also in the left hand side bar of this blog near the top.

Cruising and touring info to follow when more time