Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Friday started fairly steadily as we were both exhausted after our hiking the day before. We have managed breakfast and a bit of reading by the time our broker, Karen called to say she has arranged for someone from Furuno to come out to the boat to look at our misbehaving depth sounder and wind indicator. I gave Sergio a call directly and he was able to come that afternoon, I explained we are at anchor outside the marina and he will need to come out in our tender to the boat. No problem he says, we will meet at Pedro’s Texaco garage at 3pm.
We are not sure how many people to expect or how much kit they will bring for their diagnostic tests, so I am sent over in the tender myself. This is the first time I have driven our tender anywhere myself and am slightly nervous to say the least about performing this task with an audience of marine engineer types, but hey what the heck. So I meet Sergio, who is on his own at the garage after only one approach to an unknown guy on the bench outside the Texaco and load up into the tender. I manage to start the tender and motor out of the marina fine, all is well. Sergio has pretty good English and he is telling me how this makes a good change for tankers and fishing trawlers, which is the main market for Furuno marine electronics.
Unfortunately round the breakwater, we have to motor the tender into a headwind an either going slowly or on the plane I can’t seem to prevent Sergio getting pretty wet through in his chinos, waistcoat jacket and trainers not really suited to a drenching. I apologise all the way, he seems fine about it and even says I am a good pilot. Now I approach the boat, an action I failed to do correctly when I realised I had left my shoes on departure and Kevin had to through them into the tender from a distance. So I approach the boat, panicking about not hitting the it, Kevin has come to meet us, I then notice the painter has gone over the side though it’s cut short enough to not reach the props, slow down but then misjudge the wind, go to add a little bit of throttle, oops too much. Panic, reach to go to neutral, round the other side of the outboard engine, but now have passed the sugar scoop and am half way down the side of the boat, oops. Sergio seems to take it quite well, I apologise and bring us back round in a circle and we manage to land the boat. Sergio then gets up to reveal he is drenched all down one side of his trousers, he is very chilled (probably literally) about it though and gets straight to work.
After pulling off a few panels and testing connections, he concludes as Kevin already had, that the display units are faulty. The depth sounder sometimes sticks on a certain depth and when switched off and on will register correctly again, for example it was reading 4.5m when we were off the coast of Portugal in over 1000m instead of the --- to denote over maximum depth. The wind indicator occasionally when switched on spins continuously (instead of the once or twice expected) after an engineering tap on the display is administered it stops, (switch on and off doesn’t work). We are in touch with a few people with Furuno kit on FP boats and these seem to be common problems.
We agree Kevin should drive us back and we lend Sergio a jacket for the journey although as it is downwind it is pretty dry. We say goodbye to him and head round the marina for the rope shop to put in our order there, but they’ve decided to open at 17:30 according to the sign on the door. Oh dear, Sailor bar it is then. After one beer we return, still not open, as I said it’s pretty laid back here.
We head off to have a kebab / falafel again at 3 Euros each it’s like getting a sandwich back in the UK. It’s ok though because I have read the signs and these are special slimming kebabs…


Kebabs - the more you eat the slimmer you get...