San Miguel Marina, Tenerife

I had a very good night’s sleep being gently rocked in my bed and early in the morning I suddenly heard the engines start and I got up and changed and then I heard the anchor being pulled up which was really loud because my bunk is right next to the anchor locker. Dad and Jo had decided to set off as soon as it was daylight so we could have the best crossing we could because the winds are lighter in the morning.
It didn’t take long before we reached a wind acceleration zone which is off La Gomera which you can see from the harbour and whilst we were on the way back the winds reached our highest yet which was 41 knots and then after about an hour suddenly eased down to 25 knots again but we are glad we set off earlier because the winds could have been even worse later on in the day.

It was quite a misty day and we couldn’t see Tiede at all unlike our last crossing, but Jo saw the shadow of Tiede on the sun as it was rising so we knew it was there.

Whilst on our way back we were followed by a frigate which shadowed us for a while slowing right down to the same speed as us, we had previously seen in San Sebastian.

Also when we were on our journey we saw the Fred Olsen ferry going back and forth and Dad used the MARPA system on the radar to track how fast it was going and it showed it was going 36 knots. We also saw the Armas ferry as well. We left a bit of room for the ferries to pass so we didn’t get too close.

Also whilst we were sailing along Dad caught a fish on the fishing rods which were trailing off the back of the boat, however it was too windy to reel it in and it got off and took our lure with it.

When we were nearer to San Miguel we hit another wind acceleration zone which had started an hour earlier than what it previously did when we were there previously. Jo had to hand steer because the auto pilot couldn’t keep us on course as we were going in to the head wind which is the most difficult one to deal with. We saw about five Jet Ski’s and we have found out that it is 120 Euros for two hours to go on them, it reminded us of the film Water World were they were called Smokers.

I thought that this was a good experience on our journey back because we reached speeds of 10.1 knots as we were surfing over the waves. However this time we didn’t see any dolphins which I was expecting to see like last time we did the same route.

When we reached San Miguel marina we tried our new system of throwing a bowline to the marina assistance that are stood on the pontoon so we can control it from the boat because in the past we have had problems like them not tying us down or tying us down and then taking it off again five minutes later or trying to hold the boat themselves and not using the cleat but eventually we were tied down. This time we were on a much nicer pontoon than the time before. When we were all settled we realised that we were moored next to a boat that which we were two boats away from in San Sebastian.

We then got connected to the shore power and got the hose pipe connected and gave the boat a clean to get rid of all of the salt off it. Jo also did some more cleaning on the inside of the boat and made the heads sparkling clean. That was then followed by a delicious tomato soup which dad had made but I had to go to the shop to go and get some bread as it all had run out and when I reached the shop it was really surprising to hear lots of English voices. When I got back we all sat down and ate the tomato soup really fast as we were all really hungry.

We all got showered and changed and got ready because tonight we planned to go out for our tea and go back to the restaurant that sells the really nice chicken and chips. First of all we had to go and visit the old lady in the bar by the marina and we had a drink there and we then went on to the Irish bar to have another drink and we noticed on the TV that the news was showing floods in Ireland and that we would much rather be here than there.

Then we set of to the restaurant and at the beginning we were the only ones there so our starters came out super quick which was brushetta but they call it tomato bread, then our main meals were cooked just as quick as well and we had three times chicken and chips and Jo had the vegetarian pizza. Then after a bit of deciding we all, apart from Jo had dessert as well which was quite surprising because Jo loves dessert but she shared with Dad as they had a massive ice cream sundae but really wanted the caramel cup but they only had one left and Sean had it and I had Banana split which was really nice.

After that we all went back to the boat and shortly went to bed as we were all very tired.



Alex Penney