We said goodbye to Lanzarote and slipped out of Rubicon mid morning into a calm sea and gentle winds, then as we rounded the south side of the island the wind picked up and we set our sails for a fabulous downwind sail overnight to Santa Cruz de Tenerife - the capital of the island. We had 20-25 knots from the North East which was perfect for Askari to stride out at 8 knots average with a little help from the current.
 |
| Perfect Sailing |
We made such good progress we spent much of the trip deliberating when we should start to slow down, however our experience is that the wind eases overnight to we pressed on. It didn't ease and we arrived two hours before it got light; at 15 miles off we tried desperately to slow down but even with the smallest bit of jib we were still doing 3.5knots. We coasted into the lee of the island and the wind finally eased and we drifted for the final hour before making our approach to the harbour.
The access to the marina is via a busy port, however permission to enter was quickly granted and a cheerful marina guy radioed to say we would meet us and show us to our berth. After we attempted to get in the first berth that was too far small we managed to get tucked in - again small but we were in! The marina was very busy with the Odyssey Rally due to depart in a week so we were lucky to get a spot. We had a quick nap and then went out for lunch in the old part of town.
 |
| Lovely old part of Santa Cruz |
Santa Cruz is actually a charming city, with wide tree lined streets, many art deco buildings and most importantly for Carolyn a huge El Corte Ingles!! Yay!!
 |
| 8 floors of everything fabulous |
 |
| A few treats and a sodastream cannister |
I have to admit to being a bubbly water obsessessive and the only place in Spain that does sodastream canisters is El Corte - we also hoped they would help us with our meat and provisioning for our Atlantic crossing. So we went in to enquire; the meat section manager then came to help and then a translator - all very excited to help us with our vacuum packing, freezing and delivery. The service was just excellent. I wrote a list and dropped it in on the Friday afternoon, they packed it all and froze it down over the weekend and delivered it with all our other shopping on Monday morning. Bonus we got a voucher for champagne for 60 euros - even more fabulous!
 |
| Huge bill but big smiles at El Corte |
 |
| Christmas is looking good |
So provisioning stage 1 sorted, we headed to the bus station on Sunday and took the bus to the Anaga region for some hiking - we were held up when the bus got jammed in a street by parked cars so had to wait for the police to tow it off out the way.
 |
| Bus in a jam! |
 |
| Amazing cloud forest |
 |
| Incredible Valley walks |
 |
| Valley of Los Batanes - historic flax industry |
 |
| Sun and rain |
 |
| Happy on top |
The following week we had another warranty visit from Oyster - hopefully our final one. We had this planned for a while as we had some small gel imperfections we noted from our handover, so they sent out a guy from the hull moulders to sort this out. He also fixed up our scratch from Arecife. While this was all happening, I left Andrew to supervise and nipped off to the UK to surprise my Dad on his 70th birthday.
 |
| Happy Birthday Dad - a very emotional time |
No comments:
Post a Comment