Kevin's Birthday, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Happy Birthday to Kevin!

We headed out last night for a meal at the Chinese restaurant at the Sotavento centre at the marina to celebrate Kevin’s birthday a little early hoping to get away on 1st Oct. It was a nice relaxed night and we got an early night ready to set off the next day.
We then started early again this morning with the last minute preparations and picked up our fresh provisions ready. We then picked up the last pieces from the chandleries all around drinking water as there is some questions around the quality in Cape Verdes and we will therefore need to be fairly self sufficient until the Atlantic. We picked up our replacement water filter for our Seagull filter which we use for fresh drinking water onboard, filtered from the tanks, which arrived into Rolnautic today after being order in early July. As we were at the counter they sold another two, they hadn’t previously stocked them despite display marketing all over the shop for Seagull filters, I suggested we should be on commission now they were selling so well, but they didn’t seem convinced.

Next job was some additional water purification tablets which we use routinely as an extra precaution to our tank water, this is then filtered out by the Seagull filter leaving water that tastes as good as any bottled water. We are really pleased with the filter, the filters last a year and flow slows to a stop when they need replacing so you won’t be able to run it with exhausted filters. As we routinely have a 20 minute walk to the supermarket, it has been a godsend not to have to carry bottled water back every trip. We also have 2 x 20 litre water jerry cans and 2 x 5 litre bottles of pre-filtered water stored separately for emergencies. We also last night decided that due to the questionable quality of water in Cape Verdes we would buy 2 more 20 litre containers which we will carry empty to the Cape Verdes (as weight on a catamaran is quite critical and we are heavily laden currently with food, fuel & water). Then before we top up the tanks in Mindelo we will fill the additional water tanks and use these for drinking water primarily, using the tank water for washing etc.

We had hoped to set off this afternoon but a localised low pressure system has come into Las Palmas with heavy rain and after walking several miles this morning collecting our last supplies we are quite tired. Therefore, being shorthanded we have opted to get a good night’s sleep and head off tomorrow in better weather. The forecast is looking good for the crossing, with reasonable wind strengths so it should be some good sailing. So Kevin does get to have a beer on his birthday after all, albeit only a couple!