Final Preparations in Las Palmas (Almost!)

On Wednesday 29 November, Nicky popped into the marina office to complete our arrival paperwork, to pay for our night at anchor and to arrange for us to move into the marina. I say ‘popped’ in but the office is undermanned and so any visit normally takes about 2 hours. What was really surprising was that despite the ARC and ARC+ having departed, the office staff claimed that the marina was still full. Thinking quickly, Nicky pointed out that Sea Wind was being lifted out on Friday and suggested that we could move into their marina space then. This met with approval and she was told that BV had been allocated that space.

Washing and checking the rigging gave good views over the anchorage   

Lars’ surprise birthday party   

That gave us a couple of days in the anchorage, so we drew up a list of final preparation jobs that we could do there as well as a shorter list of chores we really wanted to be in the marina to complete.

I started a series of trips up the mast. We wanted to take a good look at the rigging to make sure that nothing was amiss and so at the same time I gave it all a good clean. We also ran an extra spinnaker halyard to give us some options in case any of the normal halyards fail on our transatlantic passage.

In amongst the work, we had an invitation over to Sea Wind whilst she was still in the water. Susanne had arranged a secret birthday party for Lars and, amazingly, managed to keep from him entirely, despite her cooking for 6 peope! He really didn’t suspect a thing and was delighted when we, as well as James and Annie from Yin N Yang, turned up. The party turned out to be a really fun evening and Susanne had done an amazing job catering, even baking a fabulous birthday cake; no mean feat in a small yacht oven!

The shower pump removed for servicing and adding fresh oil to the main engine   

Back aboard BV, we worked our way through the list of chores. I serviced the pump that gets rid of the shower water and discovered that there was a small hole in the pipework. That was surprisingly good news because we had noticed that we had started to get a small amount of water in our bilge and our investigations up to that point had failed to find the source.

Our main engine and the outboard motor were both due an oil change and so we did that, tightened the fan belt and generally checked that everything was in order. We had already changed the oil in the engine’s gearbox whilst we were in Puerto Tazacorte on La Palma and so that completed our engine preparations. Not that we expect to use it other than for getting in and out of port. Nicky then dropped me off on the beach so that I could get rid of the old oil at the marina recycling point; it certainly felt a little odd walking amongst the sunbathers carrying gallons of old engine oil.

More trips up the mast to fit anti-chafe foam to the spreaders   

Nicky unloaded the food storage lockers both to double-check what we actually had on board and to get rid of anything that had spent too long unused. Meanwhile, I spent several hours back up the mast. Long distance sailing downwind can do quite a lot of damage to the mainsail where it chafes on the spreaders and rigging. To try to minimise this, we have got a double genoa that we intend to pole out on both sides of the boat and thus avoid using the mainsail. However, should we end up using the mainsail, we wanted to minimise chafe and so my time up the mast was spent attaching foam to the back of all 4 spreaders and to the lower shrouds. The foam is plumbers’ insulation for 15mm pipe. With a slit along the length of the foam it fitted really well onto the back of the spreaders but the taping took a long time. I didn’t want to stick it directly to the spreaders and so each strip had a short length of tape covering the adhesive on the first wrap and then the tape was stuck to itself on the subsequent wraps. Not an easy task to do part way up a waggling mast. We’ll see how it holds up but hopefully it will stay in place and help protect the mainsail.

Friday morning – time to move into the anchorage   

The rest of the list of jobs were all ones that we wanted to do in the marina and so on Friday morning Nicky went ashore to confirm that the agreed space was going to be allocated to us. It turned out to be a fruitless trip. Despite there being plenty of empty berths in the marina, including 5 by Yin N Yang, the office staff still claimed that the marina was full. We were clearly missing something and, despite having arranged a berth in this way last time we were here, the lady Nicky saw seemed to suggest that we would have to go onto the reception pontoon before moving into a berth in the marina. We upped anchor to move there but were told that we couldn’t come in and had to call the mariñeros in an hour to see what could be done. Frustrated, we re-anchored and had a cup of tea. When we called up an hour later the mariñeros directed us straight to our berth – the one that had been vacated by Sea Wind that morning, exactly as Nicky had arranged 2 days earlier!

The important thing though was that we were in the marina and so could set about our final pre-departure tasks. We had looked at the long-range weather forecast 5 days before and decided that Tuesday seemed would be a reasonable day to go [Ed: far enough ahead to for us to complete all the tasks we wanted to do and mid-week so that we could get fresh fruit and veg etc the day before departure and arrange clearance from the immigration police. The only fly in the ointment was that the forecast wind was at the upper end of what we were happy to set off in. But a lot can change in a forecast in 6 days, both for better and worse, so we had nominated Tuesday as our planned departure day]. So, after spending a couple more hours in the marina office completing our arrival into the marina paperwork(!), Nicky then went and did a massive food shop. The butcher undertook to vacuum pack and freeze some meat for us to pick up just before we left, and the supermarket boxed up the contents of Nicky’s piled-high shopping trolley for delivery direct to BV. Meanwhile, I took advantage of the water supply at our berth and started to remove and wash all of our running rigging. Mousing each line in turn so that it could be removed for washing, I also took the opportunity to seize on some Dynema anti-chafe sleeves where the lines will rub on a sheave or block.

We finished off the day with a nice barbeque, still slightly concerned that the food from the supermarket hadn’t arrived. Our order, along with those of 2 other yachts, was eventually delivered at 10pm; the locals had also been buying up and having food delivered ready for the island’s early December bank holidays.

The weekend was used for our final tasks and also a party aboard BV with Lars and Susanne from Sea Wind, James and Annie from Yin N Yang plus Sam and Adrian from S/Y Neva. We did the laundry, activated the Satphone, cooked up a number of meals ready to make life easy on the initial part of the passage, and studied the weather carefully. Unfortunately, this highlighted a problem for us. During the time that we had been busy preparing, the Tuesday to Friday winds have notched up from being on the windier side of brisk, to being on the brisker side of windy (uncomfortable). It looks like delaying for a few days is the most sensible option. In the interim we shall continue to enjoy “Winter Sun Advent”. Las Palmas is gearing up for Christmas but to us December just doesn’t feel quite right wearing shorts and T-shirts!

Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Canary Islands