Sailing to Lanzarote (Part 1)

Leaving Salvagem Grande   

We reluctantly hauled our anchor up in Ensenada das Cagarras at 1000hrs on Tuesday 10 October. Our permit to stay on Salvagem Grande expired that day and so we had to leave. The reluctance was twofold. Firstly, we had both enjoyed and felt privileged to have been allowed to stay here and would have loved to have gone ashore again. Secondly, we knew that there was no wind forecast for 24 hours and we had about a 150nm passage that we now expected would have to be done under engine.

With the anchor up we reversed our pilot book’s route to get ourselves clear of the reefs and then set a course for Lanzarote. Salvagem Grande slipped away behind us and we both felt incredibly lucky to own a sailing yacht and to have be able to visit such a fantastic place.

BV sailing herself with just the wheel locked   

Our pessimism about the wind was such that we had decided not to fit the rudder for Georgina, our Hydrovane self-steering mechanism. Our reasoning was that 24 hours of motoring would have just jiggled the whole thing for the whole time and creating wear in the securing pins and holes. So, imagine our surprise when 4 hours into our passage we found that we had 10 knots of wind and that we could usefully use to sail close hauled on our track to Lanzarote. It was the first time that we had used our new mainsail close hauled and we really wanted to see how it performed. We’d specified quite a flat sail in comparison with our last one and were delighted that this provided what we wanted, a much better balance between the foresails and the main. So much so that when we trimmed the sails and locked the wheel with a smidge of weather helm, BV just sailed along for 4 hours without adjustment. The balanced sails and long fin keel kept her beautifully on track.

However, as the light faded the wind similarly dropped off to nothing and by 1900hrs we found ourselves motoring again. Overnight, during our various watches, we dodged a couple of ships, unfurled the genoa only to furl it again 20 minutes later, dodged another ship but essentially just trudged along under low engine revs.

Isla Alegranza   

Dawn, however, brought much more interesting islands to look at and a continuation of an interesting debate on board. Nicky had spotted a couple of lines in our pilot book that highlighted that Graciosa, the island just north of Lanzarote where we had originally been intending to stop, was not an official port of entry for the Canary Islands. Both the Portugal and Spain are in the Schengen/EU area and so we didn’t need visas and could, technically, move BV between them without any paperwork issues. Similarly, the Madeiran archipelago (Portuguese but an autonomous region of that country) sits inside the EU and Schengen but the Canary Islands are outside the EU (though inside Schengen). In the Madeiran archipelago, we had needed to check into and out of each island. The question was, with the Canaries sitting outside the EU, would the Spanish authorities approach things in a similar way and would we cause problems by arriving at a remote island without having first formally checked into the Canary Islands at a port of entry? Having just the day before avoided being locked up in Portugal’s most southerly prison cell for not presenting our passports and ship’s papers immediately [Ed: artistic exaggeration?!?] we agreed to play things by the rules and head on to the nearest official port of entry, Arrecife, despite the extra 20 miles or so it would add to our passage.

And so it was that when we looked out from BV after breakfast, we saw the rather amazingly sculptured Isla Alegranza to our left.

Isla de Montaña Clara   

Equally impressive, to our right, was Isla de Montaña Clara. There was no doubting that we had arrived in the volcanic Canary Islands!

Looking south towards Lanzarote and Isla Graciosa   

Having passed between these two imposing islands we turned onto a more southerly heading to make our way down the eastern side of Lanzarote to Arrecife. The only slight disappointment was that, from a distance, the northern end of Lanzarote and Isla Graciosa didn’t look anything like as interesting as Isla de Montaña Clara or Isla Alegranza. On the plus side, the heading change meant that we could kill the engine, unfurl the foresails and sail gently along in the 6-knot wind. However, after an hour or so we realised that there was a problem.

Competition! Larger but lighter yachts heading out from Graciosa and beating us in the trek south. How unreasonable of them!

Arrecife, Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain