Sailing to La Palma (Part 1)

Leaving San Sebastian   

Pico del Teide standing out clearly on Tenerife    

After 2 nights in San Sebastian marina it was time to move on again, this time towards La Palma. The forecast was for little or no wind on Monday 20 November and for it to build from the south overnight and into the next day, so we decided to motor back to Puerto de Vueltas and then set off from there early on the Tuesday morning. This had the bonus of breaking the passage to Tazacorte, on the western side of Las Palmas, into 2 parts, each of which could be completed in the 11 or so hours of daylight available each day at this time of year.

The forecast was accurate and there was virtually no wind for the passage back around the coast to Puerto de Vueltas. But it was a beautiful sunny day and we both enjoyed the scenery even if we had a sense of deja vue as we passed major waypoints (for the third time!). However, with the sun out, the landscape glowed and the cliffs and high ground seemed far less intimidating than they had on our first time along this route.

Santiago – there’s a golf course in there somewhere 

The ridgeline just east of Santiago is probably the greenest point on La Gomera at this time of year. We had wondered at it when we first arrived off the island but as we passed it this time we checked some of the tourist maps that we had obtained and confirmed that this area does, indeed, house the island’s only golf course.

Stunning scenery around La Gomera’s south coast   

La Forteleza – one of the hills we walked up when we were last at Puerto de Vueltas    

It was fun to try to identify the various hills and valleys we had walked on our last visit and interesting to compare the differences when viewed from seaward as opposed to landward.

We arrived back at Puerto de Vueltas still in extremely calm conditions and set our anchor in almost the same spot as the last time we had been here. But, as predicted, the calm didn’t last. Shortly after midnight, Nicky was woken by the wind and got up to hold anchor watch for what she assumed would be a short period whilst all the yachts aligned themselves to the new wind direction. Sadly, that was not to be. The southeasterly wind came at times from around the headland to the south of the bay and at times down the valley to the east and at times from the north. At times it blew at 5knots, at times at 20 knots – from any of the 3 directions (and sometimes from others!). So all the yachts went around in circles of varying diameters and given that we, and presumably the others, had 50m of chain out (anchored in 12m), we were soon all describing some interesting Venn diagrams. Unsurprisingly, eventually a couple of yachts got far too close to each other; happily, one of those yachts was BV and, being awake, we were able to do something about it before ‘got far too close’ became ‘collided’. It wasn’t a comfortable night but at least we were pretty sure of a decent wind for the next day’s passage to La Palma!

Puerto de Vueltas, La Gomera, Canary Islands