Gran Tarajal

After a light breakfast my first job this morning was to be winched up the mast by Kevin, thankfully not Ellen McArthur style in full on gale in Southern Oceans, but in a calm marina in the Canaries. Nonetheless, still seems like a fair way up. My job was to fit circular plastic disks above the spreaders (part of mast support hardware), which are aimed to ease the passage of the genoa (front) sail across when tacking. We saw lots of the delivery crews fitting them in La Rochelle, as the protruding structure on a catamaran can cause wearing on the sail after a while. We had been waiting for the right conditions in order to fit them, but it has become like the old nautical superstition of whistle on board, every time we plan to do it the next day it is really windy. Luckily after waking up to pretty strong winds which had been blowing through the night it actually calmed down after breakfast.
The other plan was perhaps to hire a car tomorrow to allow us to explore Fuerteventura a little more. Unfortunately when I visited the tourist information booth it appears that there are no car hire firms in Gran Tarajal. This I managed to communicate to the non-English speaking guide by making steering wheel motions with my hands as I didn’t think my discussion of the relative prices of tobacco would quite do the trick. So tomorrow looks like being a local bus trip to Las Playitas a nearby fishing village along the coast which we passed coming here instead.