Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Tuesday morning started with a visit from the Port Authority official, informing us and every other boat on the anchorage by the looks of his round that we needed to go and check in at the port office. We did so as soon as they opened and paid our 3 Euros a night for anchoring in the harbour, which also gives us access to the showers in the marina. We continued from there to find some more of the chandleries and finish our shopping list. This meant heading a little further into town on the side of the beach in front of which we are moored and the main dual carriageway into the town centre. It seems so noisy and busy, but we found another of the chandlers who stocked the brand of fitting Kevin was after and we got a few more of the items ticked off. Including a doormat for me (we have so moulded into 1950’s gender stereotypes now!), after a busy morning’s shopping we stopped for lunch at the Sailor’s Bar where we both had sandwiches, which turned out to be toasted much to Kevin’s delight as he has been craving toast (no toaster in our oven and electric uses too much power). Two beers and two sandwiches for a very reasonable 10 Euros sat alongside the harbour. It seems like a nice place, they are opposite the main visitors pontoon and have an very large visitor’s book on the bar, so I guess that is where the sailors head, so we are planning to go there for an evening soon.
Although, Kevin had some other plans for that evening after seeing a posh kebab café at the harbour complex (I think these carvings maybe the lack of meat on board!). So we headed back to the boat with our purchases and set about our jobs for the afternoon. Mine was to clean the decks, when we are on passage, clearly they get covered in salt, which is fine when you are going straight to a marina with water on tap to rinse down, but at anchor the salt spreads everywhere on clothes and throughout the boat eventually. So I decided to give it a wipe down, I managed to clean the whole deck with 5 litres of water using a hand spray bottle and a cloth to dry down afterwards. It sounds ardous, but actually in the sun it was quite a nice job. Also, every morning here we are surrounded by school children learning to sail, windsurf, in peddlelows, on RIBs etc etc. There seems to be some school based watersports here too based from the beach, as with only a few youngish looking “monitors” there are dozens of kids in the water either on the beach of weaving between the boats at anchor on various craft. The beach itself seems crowded with townspeople everyday anyway, so there is always something going on around us. Including a local sailor who brings his grandchildren everyday to the beach on his lovely wooden yacht, tying up rather unconventionally to the safe water buoy used to protect the swimmers!
So, in the evening we jumped back in the tender in our scruffs for quite a wet ride to the harbour for meal out. We brought a change of clothes and had a shower on arrival. Then a beer or two on the harbourside followed by a kebab for Kevin and Falafel for me which was actually really good and again only about 10 Euros.


Busy Town beach