Porto Santo to Arrecife Lanzarote Canary Islands

We left Porto Santo at 1320hrs on Tuesday 16th of September which meant that our 290nm passage would be spread over 3 days and we would both arrive during daylight and still have some light to move on to a further marina if there was no space for us at Arrecife. Nicky had sent 2 emails to Marina Lanzarote in Arrecife requesting a berth for 2 nights but had received 2 refusals saying they were fully booked but do try one of the other marinas in the group. Despite this, we had decided to stop by at the marina, if only to fill up with diesel and to formally arrive in the Canaries as Arrecife is a port of entry and we wanted to check in properly before exploring anchorages.

Concentrating hard on setting up Georgina

Once on our way there was a good 20 knots from the northeast and we were soon settled with 2 reefs in the main, full staysail and a couple of rolls in the genoa, rattling along nicely towards Lanzarote with Georgina keeping us on course. We swung into watches early, with my having the afternoon off watch and taking the first of the night watches. The night was dark, with just a sliver of moon, but we continued to make good progress southeast, with some amazing bioluminescence being thrown up in our wake.

Miss Sally from abeam…..

Overnight we had the lights of a yacht, Miss Sally, ahead of us, a useful marker in the very black night. We gradually overhauled her and, by late morning, we had caught up with her. The radio had been irritatingly noisy with ill-disciplined calls clogging up the emergency and calling channel; we even had people making cat meowing noises! However, as we got closer to Miss Sally the radio sprang into life with a call to us. On a working channel we learnt that they were also heading to Arrecife and, if we got closer, they would take some photos of Blue Velvet. An opportunity not to be missed, so I altered course to intercept them.

….and from forward

We reciprocated and took some nice photos of Miss Sally…

… and when we got to Arrecife we exchanged memory sticks and received over 200 excellent photos of Blue Velvet at sea. An unexpected and very pleasant passage bonus.

Miss Sally is a Halberg Rassey 39 so with our extra length we eventually passed her by and continued on towards the islands at the top end of Lanzarote.

Lots of AIS signals from ship transiting up and down the African coastline

Whilst so far in the passage we had just seen a couple of yachts, we were about to cross a very busy area of shipping as the screenshot of our chartplotter shows  above. The mix of shipping visiting the Canary Islands and transiting along the African coastline made for a very busy display and we spent the next 24 hours closely monitoring their tracks ready to adjust our course if we felt we’d get too close. By the regulations the ships should avoid us when we are sailing but, more often than not, a small adjustment of our course early on ensures that we pass safely behind the ships which makes for a less stressful passage. The rest of the day was uneventful with the miles clicking down nicely and, pleasingly, we didn’t have to make any adjustments to avoid the ships. We continued to make good progress overnight but by 0600hrs the wind had started to become variable and at times very light. Frustratingly we’d end up slowing down, then would bite the bullet and switch on the engine (as well as haul up the DuoGen, sheet in the mainsail, roll away the genoa and staysail and put the pins in to stop Georgina operating) only to have 15 or 20 minutes of motoring before the wind filled in again at 15+kts and we had to reset to sailing mode! 

Isla de Alegranza

So, at the end of our second night at sea, I came on watch at 0800hrs to find that we were already past the northern islands. Isla de Alegranza was behind us to our left… 

Isla de Montaña Clara and to the right Roque del Oeste

…and Isla de Montaña Clara was off to our right with the little rocky island of Roque del Oeste just off it.

The east coast of Lanzarote ahead…

… and at its northern end the island of La Graciosa

Ahead I could see the island of Graciosa, with Lanzarote beyond. I continued Nicky’s game of 15 or 20 minutes of motoring followed by a bit of sailing until, at 1100hrs, we barely had 6 knots of wind so the engine went on to help us cover the final miles to Arrecife.

Our last Portuguese pastries

With Arrecife in sight and both of us up we had coffee with our last 2 Portuguese pastries as a little celebration of nearly having completed the passage.

Approaching the entrance to Arrecife Harbour

Arrecife is a large commercial port with the white buildings of the town (and one tower block) standing out behind.

Turning into Arrecife’s commercial harbour

Having turned into the commercial harbour, which is quite large, we made our way across it towards the channel that would take us to the area of the marina.

The start of the channel

The pilot book is very explicit that we needed to follow the channel carefully or risk going aground but following the channel was easy to do because was well marked with surprisingly large buoys. The start point is overlooked by the Museo Internationale de Arte Contemporáneo housed in an impressive 18^th century fort.

The Museo Internationale de Arte Contemporáneo

From there it was a short distance to the fuel dock on the edge of the marina. We drifted in the vicinity as we set up our fenders and were then we were called on the radio to go onto the fuel pontoon by the marina staff who had seen us arrive.

Looking at the marina office building from Blue Velvet on the fuel pontoon

The refuel was completed quickly and when we went in to pay and clear into the Canary Islands, we were delighted to hear that they did have space available in the marina for us, so we paid for 2 nights at the same time. All very easy and painless with just an update of passports and insurance needed to bring their records up to date since our last visit in October 2017.

(L) the view back out towards the channel. (R)Our mooring was somewhere in there!

With no-one queueing up for fuel, we were able to walk down the marina to take a look at our marina berth before motoring around there so we could set the fenders up ready for the berth and would know what to look for. We are back in Spain so, as is their norm, a mariñero was sent to meet us at the mooring to help us with our lines. Always appreciated if it’s windy but not really needed today with just 4 knots of wind.

So, after 48½ hours at sea we had made it to the Canary Islands and were nicely positioned to explore Arrecife.

Arrecife, Lanzarote, Canary Islands

Arrecife, Lanzarote, Canary Islands

Porto Santo Madeira Archipelago

Shortly after we dropped anchor a ship arrived and was manoeuvred into port by 2 tugs.
We were far enough away but the tugs got very close to the yacht anchored by the entrance

Arrival in port inevitably means some cleaning and putting away of stuff, and fixing of stuff that has broken on passage. So, after we’d been ashore to complete the arrivals formalities, and before the evening cruisers’ get-together, I had another go at fixing the port compass light that I thought I had fixed in Kinsale but which had failed again during the passage. In the end that job took a couple more attempts because there were a few breaks/poor connections in the wiring and, after fixing each fault I found, I discovered that when the compass was back together, I couldn’t see if my fix had worked until it got dark. It was all rather frustrating, but I managed to get it sorted out (eventually) during our stay at Porto Santo.

The anchorage inside the harbour was full

As was the small marina

The busy boatyard at which it is remarkably good value to keep your boat ashore

The evening meet-up at the port café was great fun. There were several crews there many of whom are now based in the area. As well as chatting with Beth and Gary (OCC members on SV Dyola), we spent some time talking to Jim, who was sailing with his married friends, Paul and Sally, owners of a Moody 38, Mirage. Amazingly, it turned out that Paul and Sally had crossed the Atlantic back to the UK at the same time as us in 2020 and had been a part of the same HF radio net. Nicky took turns to run that net as her voice is very clear on the SSB but we had to admit to not remembering hearing them. To be fair, our boat name is quite distinctive, Mirage less so.

The beach by our anchorage

Saturday 13^th was laundry day. Whilst we would have preferred a lie-in after the passage, the advice Nicky had been given was to arrive at the laundry as soon as the doors opened at 0900hrs or risk being in a very long queue. Unfortunately, even at 0900hrs there was already someone ahead of her in the queue. Vivian’s washing had been in the queue for most of the previous day, gradually going backwards as other people had queue-jumped when she’d not been around. Even with the 45min delay (for Vivian’s washing to go through) Nicky got both our loads through and was back aboard Blue Velvet by 1130hrs. There being no tumble drier, the next challenge was keeping the drying laundry attached to Blue Velvet whilst the 20+kt wind tried to remove it. At least it didn’t take too long to dry in the strong wind and sun.

Our other chore for the morning had been to exchange the Campingaz cylinder that had expired very shortly after we had departed from Kinsale. Nicky had been told by one of the other cruisers the previous evening that 907 cylinders could be exchanged at the marina office, but the lady there in the morning had said ‘no’ and had indicated that she should try at the GALP garage on the road to the airport. She’d mentioned this to Beth and Gary when she had seen them between laundry loads and they had said that they would speak to José, the boatyard manager (and previously the marina manager). But it was the weekend and there was unlikely to be an answer before Monday. So, with the washing dried, we headed off into town to visit the relatively new Pingo Doce supermarket. It’s about a mile along the coast road towards the town, and a hot, flat, straight walk in the sun, though there is a lovely beach to look at, and some nice boats in the anchorage too! En route we passed a lady dragging a trolley loaded with a 20litre diesel can. Clearly, she’d just visited the garage: “Does the garage sell Campingaz cylinders?” She thought it did and gave us directions (though we already had it from Google Maps), so we took a 15min detour to the garage. It doesn’t sell Campingaz, though it does sell GALP cylinders which look remarkably like Campingaz ones, just in a natty shade of orange. The lady we spoke to said that we could exchange our Campingaz cylinder for a GALP cylinder (which we would then not be able to exchange elsewhere) for €16 or we could buy (rather than exchange) a full GALP cylinder for about €30. Given that we had paid €55 to exchange a Campingaz cylinder in Ireland, the latter seemed like a bargain, but we decided to see how full our current cylinder felt before committing.

From the garage we headed into town and had an enjoyable wander around, as well as 2 delicious ice-creams. And from there we headed back towards the harbour, stopping at the Pingo Doce for supplies of wine and fresh food. It’s a fantastic supermarket and, as well as the essentials, we also came away with some lovely Portuguese tarts, pimenton Padron, and some huge prawns, with which we later, belatedly, celebrated our arrival in Porto Santo along with some fizz.

We made a very late start on Sunday 14th morning, catching up on sleep missed on the passage south. When we eventually surfaced, it was to a message from Paul on Mirage who said that they would be leaving at 1300hrs if we would like to take Mirage’s anchor space in harbour. Oh yes, we would! It had been a rolly night in the outer anchorage and it looked as if it would be getting worse. We’d be very happy to move somewhere flatter! However, the wind appeared to be going round to the southeast and, with Mirage relatively close in on the north side of the harbour, we wanted to see how much space there was likely to be between us and the shore before we gave up our space outside. We took the dinghy in and had a good nosey around, as well as a farewell chat with Paul, Sally and Jim. All looked good so we weighed anchor and took Blue Velvet in just before 1300hrs.

Blue Velvet anchored inside the harbour

A short time later, Mirage’s anchor was up and we were waving them goodbye……before dropping our hook in their recently vacated space. It was lovely and flat but with far stronger gusts from all manner of directions compared to the anchorage outside. Like Mirage we only put out 25m chain, as the anchorage was quite tightly packed. Given the wind strength (or, at least, the gust strength) this didn’t really feel like enough chain but it was all we could afford given the space constraints and the fact that the boats danced around every which way.

The down-draughting wind off the hills made all of the yachts in the anchorage spin
and point in different directions

We spent the rest of the day aboard, watching the Dance of the Yachts and thanking our lucky stars that we’d nabbed a good-sized space in an area where most of the boats seemed to swing the same way: there were a couple of yachts further out which seemed destined to always be within no distance of each other and always pointing 180° out, no matter how hard the wind was blowing or from which direction it was gusting.

It was too windy to dry the sails on deck but it was so warm it didn’t take long with
them hung up in the saloon

Once settled we were also able to tackle drying, folding and packing away our storm sails which we had stuffed in the forward heads when we took them down after the gale had passed.

Pimenton Padrons with sundowners

In the middle of the morning on Monday 15^th, José came up trumps. His gas-man friend arrived at Beth and Gary’s boat clutching a full Campingaz cylinder. Beth called us and for the princely sum of €20 we were the proud owners of a full Campingaz cylinder. Hooray!

With the gas supplies full again, it was time to refill the water tanks and tick off our final post-passage chore which also water related as it was to fix the contents gauge on the aft water tank cluster. The gauge is a TekTank system with a thin tube that runs from the gauge to a probe in the tank and somewhere along its run the tube had split. To fix the problem we had to lift a couple of the floor boards and run a new tube up to behind the electrical panel at the chart table. Once the new tube was connected up it all worked again and after replacing all of the floorboards we rewarded ourselves with some lovely Portuguese pastries. We spent the afternoon on a trip up to the supermarket to do our final shop ready for the passage to the Canary Islands, before heading back to Blue Velvet to enjoy our last evening in Porto Santo.

In the morning, we realised that there were a couple of food items that we had forgotten to buy the previous day. We also needed to visit the harbour authorities to check out from Porto Santo, so we headed ashore reasonably promptly on Tuesday 16th to run the errands. Back on board we quickly stowed everything and headed out of the harbour and turned Blue Velvet’s bow south towards the Canaries.

Porto Santo, Madeira Archipelago

Kinsale to Porto Santo – Day 10

This was our tenth and final day of the passage. After a night of light wind, it finally strengthened and we had a fast final 30 miles to our destination; Porto Santo in the Madeira archipelago.

Land Ho!

After so many days seeing sea, stars and several dolphins, the big event of the day was seeing the island of Porto Santo appear on the horizon.

As we got closer, tall peaks and sharp off lying rocks made for dramatic scenery.

The harbour is on the south side of the island so we made our way around the eastern end of the island and got our first glimpse of the town and port.

There is a small marina inside the harbour but this is apparently normally full. Three yellow buoys mark the edge a no anchoring area to give the ferry space to turn but to the north of these yellow buoys is an anchoring area. With so many yachts anchored outside where there was a bit of roll from the swell, we didn’t hold up much hope of there being space inside and, as we passed the entrance to the harbour, it looked pretty full inside.

So, instead, we picked a clear area outside and dropped our anchor in 10 metres on a sandy seabed with beautifully blue water.

The marina and border offices were closed for lunch so we had time to put the covers on Blue Velvet, inflate the dinghy and shower ready to go ashore to complete the arrivals formalities.  Even better, we’d been in touch with Beth Browne, a fellow OCC member who was ashore in the boatyard on SV Dyola with her fiancé Gary. Beth had let us know that every Friday all of the cruisers get together in the port bar for a drinks party.  Arriving in Porto Santo on a Friday afternoon was clearly the perfect timing – party first then catch up on sleep later!

Daily Passage Statistics
Position at midday 11 Sep: N35 10.16 W015 42.16
Position at midnight (0001hrs) 12 Sep: N34 06.31 W015 58.17
Midday to midday distance through water: 146 nautical miles (average 6.1 knots)
Midday to midday GPS distance towards destination: 140 nautical miles
Midnight to midnight distance through water: 71 nautical miles (average 6.2 knots)
Midnight to midnight GPS distance towards destination: 65 nautical miles
Total miles covered through water: 1275 nautical miles
Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Porto Santo): 0 nautical miles (1170nm passage)

Porto Santo, Madeira Archipelago

Kinsale to Porto Santo Madeira Archipelago - Day 9

We motored, and motored…..and motored. In fact we didn’t stop motoring until about 0900hrs on Thursday 12 September. Part way through the night at watch changeover, Nicky had thought we had enough wind to sail but once we had the sails up, the wind dropped away again. Still, it gave us the opportunity to move the pole from starboard to port, setting us up nicely for when the wind did actually return from the northeast. And, at 0900hrs, after more rain showers (what a joy!) there was enough wind to sail. We set full main and poled out genny and, later, the staysail sheeted centrally to reduce roll, and bustled along at about 6kts with the countdown to Porto Santo firmly in our sights.

The skies were still rather cloudy, with the odd rain shower disrupting and then augmenting the wind as it blew through, but the air temperature was a very balmy 25°C (a hot 28°C in the cabin) and we broke out the shorts for the first time in a very, very long time!

Disappointingly, the number of rain cells increased as the afternoon progressed. Consequently, the wind was more disrupted and our speed dropped, and all the whilst Georgina, the Hydrovane, needed to be tended more to keep Blue Velvet heading in the right direction. But we continued to make progress, just not as quickly as we would have wished.

Passage Statistics
Position at midday 11 Sep: N35 10.16 W015 42.16
Position at midnight (0001hrs) 12 Sep: N34 06.31 W015 58.17
Midday to midday distance through water: 146 nautical miles (average 6.1 knots)
Midday to midday GPS distance towards destination: 140 nautical miles
Midnight to midnight distance through water: 143 nautical miles (average 6 knots)
Midnight to midnight GPS distance towards destination: 136.5 nautical miles
Total miles covered through water: 1204.5 nautical miles
Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Porto Santo): 65 nautical miles (1170nm passage)

Kinsale to Porto Santo - Day 9

Kinsale to Porto Santo Madeira Archipelago - Day 8

Wednesday began with moderate winds (around 15kts) still from the northwest but the forecast was for it to drop off during the day to around 10kts and to veer from northwest to northeast by the early hours of Thursday morning. We had pleasant sailing through until lunchtime, at which point the wind, as promised, began its gradual decrease and veer. We took the opportunity of a particularly deep lull to drop the mainsail and reattach one of the mast track cars to the luff connector. This was the second mainsail luff connector that had become detached from its track car, the first having been on day 2 of the passage, which was down to the securing pin having sheared. We assumed that the same had happened this time but, actually, the securing pin had started to migrate up and out of the track car, releasing the connector from the car. It was easy enough to put everything back together again, but we realised that this wasn’t the only car/connector combo with a migrating securing pin. Having checked all the cars, and tapped the pins back into place as necessary, we rehoisted the mainsail as the wind had returned. A chore for the fix list for when we are in port.

The dark clouds which affected the wind

My afternoon watch was a real mixed bag with the wind up and down and all over the place as dark squall clouds passed close by stealing the wind or pushing it to excess. 

The genoa now poled out to starboard which takes a bit of work – it’ll probably be needed on the
other gybe in 20 mins!!!

As soon as I had set the sails for one wind direction, it was all change and the sails needed to be in a different configuration. Hugely frustrating!

By the evening we had decided that the only sensible option was to motor. Under power, being pushed along intermittently by the 2m swell and with only 7kts of wind from astern, the mainsail slatted and banged horribly, and we could almost see the damage being done to the new material. We rounded up and dropped the sail which made everything a lot more pleasant. Fortunately, the forecast has the wind getting stronger for the rest of the passage so we are hopeful that by dawn we'll be sailing again.

A nautical roundabout for ships?

From the photos it might look like there is no other traffic close, but you do need to keep a good look out both visually and electronically. We’re currently on the extended approach to the Straits of Gibraltar and so there is a reasonable amount of shipping passing by. Bizarrely, just before midnight we found ourselves close to what seems to be a nautical roundabout for ships; 4 of them all pointing in different directions nearly spaced in a circle.  Just a fluke of timing. 

Passage Statistics
Position at midday 10 Sep: N37 27.35 W015 07.81
Position at midnight (0030hrs) 11 Sep: N36 20.17 W015 25.06
Midday to midday distance through water: 157 nautical miles (average 6.5 knots)
Midday to midday GPS distance towards destination: 151 nautical miles
Midnight to midnight distance through water: 148 nautical miles (average 6.2 knots)
Midnight to midnight GPS distance towards destination: 142 nautical miles
Total miles covered through water: 1062 nautical miles
Approximate distance to go (GPS route to Porto Santo): 201 nautical miles (1170nm passage)

Kinsale to Porto Santo - Day 8