Departing at about 10.00 in the morning after everyone had chance to have breakfast and take a shower, we slipped the ropes with help from our neighbours who insisted on it, even though we now have a very good, well practiced routine. “No thanks we are ok”, replied Jo, but that did not deter him from assisting us and doing totally the opposite to what Jo was asking. I was in the process of showing to Sean how to set up a slip and what actions to take when the request to slip was heard, when I heard Jo whose voice was now getting louder. I looked over at what the problem was and saw our additional helper removing the slips, which we had setup previously, without any request from the helmsman. No one was on the helm at this point, so a very quick lesson for Sean who did his part very well and me responding by jumping up at the helm to take control, before our boat started to batter the boat next to us or bounce repeatedly off the pontoon removing pieces of shiny gel coat in the process. The boat next door had previously had a visit from a marine surveyor, explaining the cost of the damage he had caused from his last attempt at parking his own boat, hitting the biggest, most expensive looking boat in the marina, ouch! We reversed out of our designated location, without hitting anything, a bit sooner than I expected, no harm done, who needs coffee to wake you up in the morning!
We departed San Sebastian, via the small ships channel onto a flat calm blue sea with clear skies and the sun now making sunglasses compulsory, although Alex does not bother to wear any at any time.
Our destination was an anchorage near Valle Gran Rey so as to make the crossing to El Hierro as small as possible, we headed along the coast standing off about a mile passing other possible anchorages, which looked fabulous. One of them I noticed from the chart had a wreck right in the middle of the bay which later proved to tempting, after passing other possible anchorages, we turned back to go and investigate. On our passage we noticed another yacht in front of us, which through the binoculars looked like another catamaran and seemed to be heading to El Hierro. On turning around to go back to the bay, the other yacht followed suit and started to follow us to our new planned destination. The yacht did turn out to be another catamaran, a Lagoon 410, with a Norwegian flag off the back.
We anchored in the far north eastern part of the bay and as soon as the anchor was set, it seemed either the boat had burst into flames or I had my first mutiny with all hands diving in the crystal clear blue water, all surfacing with some individual comment from the initial shock, which soon wears off and becomes very pleasurable!
Alex was soon equipped with mask and snorkel and set off to explore the reef, Sean was happy enough to be floating around in the water, Jo was preparing lunch and I put on the diving gear to go and inspect the anchor, which was visible form the surface (10 meters), but I insisted it needed closer inspection. The Norwegian boat arrived soon after dropping anchor about 30 meters from us, why so close? I have no idea, maybe just being friendly!
The bottom was sandy, a mixture of white and black sand, made perfect anchoring and I can confirm the anchor was well set, swam around a little to make sure we did not snag on that wreck, which we had not. We all retired back to the boat at the dinner lady’s request to an excellent lunch followed by chilling out all afternoon, with Sean improving his sun tan further than expected.
Anchor watch had previously been explained to the crew and a new proposal was now offered, who would like to do a night sail to El Hierro, with all hands unanimously in favour, we decided to set off at 20:00, with our usual night watch routine in place (21:00 – 00:00, 00:00 – 03:00, 03:00 – 06:00, 06:00 – 09:00)
Passing Playa Santiago, La Gomera
The first watch was Alex and I, so both Jo and Sean retired to get some rest before they started the midnight watch. We were under motor as there was very little wind, peaking at 6 knots on the nose so not much good and as Ugrib had predicted, so no surprises. Alex had her first night sailing experience with phosphorescence beginning to glow from the stern and the clarity of the sky with stars appearing in the thousands visible to the naked eye, we also spotted a couple of shooting stars. We were soon replaced by the second watch and we both retired to get some rest with nothing to report apart from the glow behind us was Valle Gran Rey and the passing of a cruise ship.
Half an hour into the rest I heard the genoa being brought into service with the engines being turned off, great no noise from the engines plus we get to save on the diesel bill, a great notion to sleep on. 15 minutes later with waves now starting to pound on the side of the boat, I decided to go and see what was happening, the situation was that we had winds increasing from 18 to 24 knots within a short space time, which seemed to be fine, leave them to it and a good experience for Sean. Back to bed, after another 10 minutes the pounding was now a bit more serious, so back up to see what the current conditions were, the wind had now increased to 30 knots, which was not expected or predicted at all. This must have been a local wind acceleration zone, which is not described in any of our pilot guides?
Alex was still in bed and hopefully sleeping through it, this being Sean’s first experience of a night watch was not feeling at his best and this was not what I wanted for both Sean and Alex to experience. I volunteered to take Sean’s place and he can go back to his room and sit this one out, the windex was now reading 34 knots and we were not even halfway across. The good news it was coming from the starboard quarter, so the boat was not hanging around, though it did mean we would arrive in El Hierro much sooner than anticipated. Which is what happened, we arrived about 3 hours sooner than expected, we heaved too 2 miles off the harbour entrance waiting for day light. This should have been around 06:30 - 07:00, 07:40 we were happy enough to enter the harbour, the pilot guides explaining that is a new marina with pontoons, which have both electricity and water supplied to each berth, great, chance to rope off and do a bit of exploring, ha, so we thought!
We entered the marina, which was surrounded by a big new substantial breakwater, one of the biggest we have seen so far in the Canaries, then onto the yacht marina, which also had been substantially upgraded. On the approach I passed a comment to Jo saying we should be ok for a berth as I could not see many masts. In fact I could not see any, we entered the marina to the biggest disappointment we have had so far, not a pontoon in sight, only local swing moorings which were full of local boats. We pulled in alongside the big concrete wall, which is not yacht friendly at all or any boat come to that. We both checked the pilot guides again, surely two of them can’t be wrong, yep they were, and in fact both accounts were very similar in description, Hmmmm.
Marina La Estaca, El Hierro
We then decided, that the description did not match our expectation, so the good thing with a boat, if you don’t like it, you can go. We woke both Alex, (who had slept all the way through the crossing) and Sean, explaining to them what the current situation was and our dilemma. We could risk going south to the other marina on El Hierro and trying that, but we were now losing faith in our pilot guides, so with only Jo touching land to pull the mooring ropes over the bollards, we decided to go back from whence we came!
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