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

Sailing to the Cape Verde Islands (Part1)

Leaving Las Palmas   

The morning of Saturday 9^th December was our last in Las Palmas. The 800nm passage to the Cape Verde Islands (CVI) would be our longest to date and it’s a major milestone – leaving Atlantic Europe for Atlantic Africa – so we were both excited and a little nervous. We got up early, hoping to be away by 9am, but as we got BV ready to go Nicky asked, “where’s our Cape Verde courtesy ensign?”. I realised with a shock that we didn’t have one. I’d bought the courtesy ensigns for this side of the Atlantic several years ago and, at the time, we hadn’t been thinking about visiting the CVI and so hadn’t bought one. In the intervening years, our plans changed but I had forgotten that the crucial flag had not been purchased…… and so a trip to the chandlers was added to the final list of jobs. Despite it being a bank holiday and most of the shops being shut, we did find one of the chandlers open at 9am and, happily, they sold a huge variety of courtesy ensigns. Problem solved! We met up with the crews of Sea Wind, Yin N Yang and Neva, said goodbye to them and then slipped our lines to move to the fuel pontoon for a final top up of the tanks. The refuel took a little longer than expected because there was a 35m yacht hogging the fuel berth but that gave Nicky a bit longer to try to return our marina security cards [Ed: the final time in that dreadful queue!]. That task took a good half an hour during which time I desperately avoided catching the eye of the refuel man who wanted us to move off as BV was blocking the final corner of his refuelling area. In the end, Sam from Neva, who was also in the office queue, gave Nicky the deposit money and agreed to return the cards on our behalf.

First sunset of the passage with Gran Canaria slipping away behind us   

We eventually got clear of the marina at 11am and it quickly became apparent that, despite there having been lots of wind during the previous few days [Ed: and forecast to be lots more in a couple of days’ time], there was now insufficient wind to sail. Rather surprisingly however, there was far less swell than the last time we had left Las Palmas, perhaps because the wind had recently been from the east rather than the north to northeast. We kept the engine on and motored and then motor-sailed until we were clear of the island. Here the wind filled in properly at about 15knots from the east and we were able to set BV up properly for the passage. Georgina, our Hydrovane, steered BV beautifully and we had good, fast sailing overnight, even with one reef in. It was a very satisfying way to start the passage and settle into our watch routine. Our cooking preparations whilst we had been in port also helped, with a beef stroganoff all ready to heat up and eat for dinner.

The weather window continued to work well for us into Sunday with more fast sailing in the morning resulting from the a 20 knots wind and a 2-3m swell. However, we knew that wouldn’t last and during the afternoon the wind eased off to 10-12 knots, which made for more sedate [Ed: boring!] sailing, but on the plus side the swell reduced a bit too. Nicky was much more productive than me during her watches and checked through all the fresh food to make sure that none had started to spoil. She also began a record of what we ate and drank to help with future victualling for long passages. My conclusion is that for my watches I need more Maddalena cakes (mini sponge cakes) to go with my mugs of tea; I think that Nicky’s conclusions will be a bit more scientific. With a clear horizon, we actually saw the fabled green flash of light just after the sun dropped below the horizon.

Blue water cruising   

Taking sunsights 

We had set off with our eye more on the weather forecast, notably the wind strength, than on the moon phase. As it happened, we set off in the last phase of the moon, with a half-moon which appeared after midnight on first night, rapidly reducing in size and appearing later as the nights progressed. Consequently, the first watches of the nights were very dark with no moon and on nights 4 and 5 the whole night was pretty black as what moon there was was extremely small. However, being so far away from any man-made light meant that we had a spectacular canopy of stars above us. Being so far south many of the stars we are familiar with in the UK were below the horizon, so we had to get out our star book to identify what we were looking at. Overnight into Monday 11 Dec the wind reduced to 10 knots and stayed that way all day. As a result, our speed dropped off to around 5 knots or below. Fortunately, the Canaries to CVI route benefits from a bit of help from the south-going Canaries Current; it all helps the miles tick down. So, Monday was easy cruising with deep blue sea around us, bright blue skies above and no other yachts in sight, just the odd ship or 2 to keep an eye on as they passed us by, though we rarely actually saw any ships; most passed us out of visual range and we only knew they were there thanks to the AIS. As we sailed south the temperature gradually increased, though the nights were still a little cool. Not as cool as it was in the UK though. We had word from family in Shropshire that they had 6” of snow and down to minus 13 deg C whilst we were basking in temperature in the mid-20s by day and mid-teens by night (and a sea temperature of around 23). During the day, Nicky took some sun sights and from them plotted our position as just 2 miles from where the GPS said we were. That’s amazingly accurate for astro-navigation and so she was very chuffed [Ed: accuracy greatly helped by calm seas and moderate winds. Two days later in 3-4m seas and 20-25kts of wind my accuracy was down to within 10nm of the GPS position but that’ll do nicely for what is really an area nav system!]. My astronav work was somewhat scuppered by cloud covering the sun at critical times on ‘my’ navigation days so I didn’t manage to get a sextant fix. So, Nicky retains the crown for making the best sunsights so far……..but I’m sure I’ll get some fixes done during the leg to Barbados.

Stronger wind sailing    

Monday night into Tuesday brought better sailing conditions compared to the day but come dawn on Tue 12 Dec the wind dropped again, so much so that in the late morning we switched the engine on for an hour and a bit to keep us moving through the water and reduce the noise of the slatting sails caused by BV’s wallowing in the swell. Happily, we didn’t need to run the engine for long and during the afternoon the wind built nicely, and we had a couple of ‘interesting’ rain squalls too. The increase in the wind meant we needed to reduce sail and as I was off watch asleep Nicky spent the best part of 2 hours rolling the genoa away, putting a reef in the main, gybing and re-rigging the spinnaker pole on the other side. Once I came on watch we worked together to put in a second [Ed: and then third!] reef and unfurl some genoa to balance the sail plan.