Distance Logged: 854 nM
Position: 29 13'.701N, 13 30'.175W
Distance to La Graciosa: 0nm
Total Ships Log: 1245nM
We have finally moored at La Graciosa, Canary Islands, 1212 nM after leaving La Rochelle and 11 days at sea. Overall we are extremely pleased with how well the voyage has gone, the boat has done excellently and we have are really pleased with our own performance in getting here through some fairly challenging conditions and circumstances on route. We were under a certain amount of time pressure for me to get back to work and also the exportation rules for the boat which made us decide to do the La Coruna to Canaries run in one hit, otherwise I think we would definitely have spent some more time visiting other ports on the way. Additionally for all those prophesising divorce before the wedding, we got on extremely well throughout!
The boat has been great, we both agreed that to do such a long trip relatively short-handed would have been far harder without the comfort of our boat. The deck level saloon definitely came in very handy for getting out of the elements and making watch duty less taxing. The lack of heeling on a catamaran and high freeboard also reduces the stress on the crew. Our favourite day on the boat was definitely when we eventually got favourable winds and managed to log 149 miles in a day. We are still pretty conservative in terms of sail area and were by no means pushing the manufactures recommendations, in 20 knots we had 2 reefs in the main and half genoa yet were touching 10 knots. You could really feel the boat hit the plane and fly. A really exhilarating sailing day and made up for all of the motoring!
The Spifurl sail (additional very large foresail bought for light winds) certainly gave us some great speed coming out of La Rochelle, but we seem to have consistent problems with furling in light or building winds, so we will be contacting Facnor to get some advice as we have discovered the furler we were supplied with was not the latest model and there are some considerable design improvements in the later version.
One of the highlights have definitely been the regular visits of dolphins, we even had a pod come and join us on the way into Graciosa. They always seem to arrive in fairly large numbers and take great delight in circling the boat and performing various acrobatics mostly in groups of two or three. They are certainly social creatures and it’s hard to tell if these games are for our benefit or theirs.
Dolphin visit along Portuguese Coast
I think one of the major challenges was also the shipping traffic, routing wise we are really happy with when we chose to get across the Traffic Separation Scheme (controlled motorway for large ships in congested area channelling them into a specific area marked on the charts) just North of the Lisbon Scheme last Friday afternoon. There are a number of TSS’s down the coast of Portugal and into the Gibraltar Straits, we picked a really clear calm afternoon with good visibility, put the radar on long range and made our way across. The crossing was extremely stressful, we were 90% across and just two more ships to pass clear of which were tracking nicely across on the radar, when the second of the two which was the size of a small island decided to slow down then eventually come to almost a stop in front of us! We can only imagine that he must have been in contact with the TSS controllers who were getting him in queue, it was rather hard to tell with the amount of VHF traffic. Either way we had to make a rapid turn to starboard, once we had established that we weren’t imagining things and take a massive 2 mile detour round his stern!
Kevin catches a garfish
We were on short watches the rest of that day and night with the other sleeping on the saloon seats until we were sure we were far enough west to be out of the way. We found all of the big ships we encountered to be extremely courteous and made there intentions clear very early, well all except one… It was the early hours of Saturday morning when one of the ships approaching from astern (we were lined up with the outer of the southbound traffic), continued to follow us without any apparent intention to overtake with the gap gradually closing as I came on watch. Kevin stayed on too, as we decided on the next course of actions. Kevin suggested that we shine the searchlight on the sail to make them aware that we are just a yacht and not another tanker to be following and get them to make their intentions clear, whilst he prepared the VHF and white collision flares just in case. Luckily after a two or three flashes of light on the sails the vessel immediately showed us a port light and made his overtaking manoeuvre. As he drew level with us he gave us a flash of his searchlight, we assume as a thanks for waking him up! Kevin returned the gesture and went to get some sleep.
Alegranza – Nature reserve to the north of Graciosa - our first sight of land
He had managed about an hour and a half when I had to wake him again to inform him that the flash I had seen behind us a few minutes before had been confirmed as lightening by a second flash a few minutes later. I moved our EPIRB and sat phone to the oven (though I’ve always been a bit dubious on the effectiveness of that, but we always keep a handheld GPS in a tin too just incase). We had managed to clear the squalls the preceding morning by getting further west going across the shipping lanes, however, they were now back surrounding us and now with sheet lightening! The textbook anvil shaped black angry clouds were passing either side of the boat and we just had to move away from metal items and hope we passed clear, luckily about 1-2 hours later the last ones did and we were untouched and all electronics still operating. The rest of the day was some fairly big swells and we both took turns to catch up on some sleep as much as possible through Saturday. Luckily the following day was our fast sailing day so that soon lifted our spirits again after a stressful few hours!
The rest of the trip was pretty slow, we had to motor the last two days and just caught up on some sleep and got ready for arrival. I cut Kevin’s hair, he shaved off his cruising beard and we got the boat clean, in fact we were so effective in our preparation that I was worried that immigration would not believe we had just completed 8 days at sea!
Arriving into Estrecho del Rio – strait between Lanzarote (to left) and Graciosa (to right)
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