Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Having had not a day off from boat jobs all week we felt we had earned a weekend today and so Kevin set about dusting off his sextant in order to get in practice for the next crossing. He has also got some software called Nav32 which he wanted to try, so I left his revising his notes and taking sun-sights whilst I went off on a shopping quest.

Ever since I joined the boat in June carrying a lovely print of a turtle which I bought some years ago in Hawaii we have been looking for an appropriate way to hang it. We’d agreed with Alex that it would go in her cabin, but we’d only found the standard hooks so far on each island and so I continued the quest to El Corte Ingles. Finally, I had found what we wanted on the 6th floor, a small oval shaped plate with two holes on one end, through which you screw into the back frame and a slot at the other end which protrudes to the side of the picture and is used to secure to the wall. Kevin is meticulous about doing the job right and waiting for the right solution, so finally we can hang the picture. Except you’ve guessed it the screws we had were too small for the slot so Monday will be another trip, but finally we will be there!

We went back to the Sailor Bar to answer some eBay questions and tell them we would not tell them the reserve price and to authorise the new laptop to play our iTunes purchases (another unexpected difficulty). We returned to the boat for our dinner, curried lentils, another cruising recipe before heading down the other side of the breakwater to take Kevin’s star sights and 8.24pm which is apparently Civil twilight. It is not exactly ideal, due to the light pollution and the limited horizon available which mean that only a two point fix was possible on Altair and Jupiter. However, he was very pleased in the circumstances to get a fix of 28°16’.0N, 15°17’.6W (Actual 28°07’.5N, 15°25’.5W)