Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Wednesday was a fairly quiet day, we spent fitting / using the supplies we had bought in the chandleries. We also had another trip in as inevitably the beginning of this job on Tuesday afternoon revealed additional parts were necessary. This necessitated a run in on the tender, but as the chandlery in question is the same end of the marina as we are anchored, we opted to tender over to the beach rather than all the way into the marina then a walk round it’s full circumference and back for couple of stainless steel bolts. So, I got to sit on the beach with the tender while Kevin popped along the path to the marina. It was a lovely sunny morning and the usual kid’s schools party were over running the beach, dive bombing off the pier and generally enjoying themselves while the Monitors were running around trying to control them.
Kevin has improved his preventer running through the addition of a pad eye and block on each side deck – though will do a blog update shortly with the details and photos. I spent the day using some of my new cleaning products such as Rust Stain remover and various other potions, probably won’t sound too interesting, but again, it means being out on deck and these specialist products do all the work for you. I get bored sunbathing, so this is just as good for me, especially as I usually seem to get the washing the inside of the boat job when we do a big clean, so I appreciate getting to come above decks.
We also got to meet the famous Pedro of the Texaco fuel station at the marina who is mentioned in all the pilot guides as the man to help you with anything. The staff t-shirts in the garage even say Pedro Texaco on them. We tendered over in the afternoon to fill our new petrol jerry can and just one diesel can. We pulled up at the fuel dock, there was no one to help and a guy beside us in a tender looked like he had filled up himself, so we did the same and went into pay. The lady at the counter just looked at me blankly when I walked in and called Pedro. I tried to explain to him that I had come to pay, he then had to go out with a piece of paper to write down how much we’d had (this is a car petrol station too) as they appear to have no way of knowing at the till how much you have bought, in fact there is only one chandlery in the harbour working on an electronic till. Even though this is a capital city for three islands it is still very laid back. Any day, sat on the bench outside the petrol station you will always find three of four people sat having a coffee with Pedro or one of the other staff.
We have used less than 10 litres of diesel (approx) since 14th May when we arrived at the Canaries due to the constant wind here and that includes having to run the engine in Graciosa for power due to no petrol available and post engine service running. We have logged 210 miles during this time!


Las Palmas de Gran Canaria marina