Canary Islands

July 17, 2008

Position N 35 36.0' W 006 51.9' at 1425 hours UTM. At sea and bound for Porto Santo, Madeira.

Position N 33 39.8' W 009 52.4' at 17:49 hours UTM Changed course for Canaries because of weather issues. Rough seas, otherwise all well on board.

We raised our anchor this morning at 0510 hours and set sail with an intended destination of Porto Santo, Madeira. Our exit in darkness was accompanied by blaring, hammering rock music from the Spanish shore, as the previous night's party was still in full swing. Our departure in blackness was in order to hit the Straits at three hours after Gibraltar high water. This would give us a counter current for the first hour or so but then we would have a following current when we crossed the main shipping lanes to the African side of the straits. The Gibraltar harbor is filled with lights of all kinds and Annette and I both strained to make out those that were moving and those that were possibly not. The radar is pretty much useless for this task, as when left on the mode where a moving object leaves an electronic "wake", there were so many reflections that the screen just fills up with clutter. Nevertheless, we gradually eased past the rows of anchored behemoths and hugged the northern shore. Once we rounded the corner into the Strait proper, there was swell, plenty of opposing current and lots of shipping. We were on the northern edge of the main shipping lane and the freighters passed by just south of us but well clear. As dawn approached, we would cross both traffic lanes to the African side. This was much more exciting as the oncoming traffic stream moved at a frightening relative speed. As it

was, we just made a single course correction to dodge between a pair of ships and we were clear. Although we might have legal "right of way", being as we were under full sail, it is hard to press the point at the inquest. We always follow the "displacement rule of navigation" wherein they win.

We were just passing Tangier when the wind began to pick up. It was blowing from behind and we had been sailing on poled Genoa, winged main and mizzen. The increase in strength was not forecast and we put the mainsail away with winds of 26 knots from behind. The high winds stayed with us while we headed into our first night at sea. but these winds had now clocked around so that we were broad reaching with Genoa and Mizzen. A full moon rose to illuminate the heaving waters. When I checked the weather forecast, it now contained a warning for the morning past, of gale force winds in the Gibraltar Straits. The warning had been issued at 0900 hours UTM, about 5 hours after our passage. Really useful Guys! At 1425 hours UTM our position was N 35 36.0' W 006 51.9' .

July 18, 2008

As the first night at sea passed, the wind had gradually clocked around to just behind the beam and the seas had built up accordingly. A small depression had appeared on the weather forecast and the measured air pressure aboard DoodleBug was dropping precipitously. The waves were almost broadside to our passage and were both steep and short at up to ten feet high. The latest forecast showed the winds increasing even more and also veering more to a close hauled point of sail. This was not going to work! At 0515 hours, we made the decision to bypass Madeira and sail directly for the Canaries. We made a course change of near 30 degrees and now the waves were coming at our starboard side, stern quarter. By 0830 hours we were taking 15 footers and occasionally a confused wave pattern would put green water aboard. We were sailing with reefed Genoa plus mizzen and still occasionally hitting 10 knots over the ground. The new forecast claimed "rough seas" and we were certainly getting these, with an awkward motion aboard DoodleBug that found any loose item and hurled it across the cabin. The day was hazy and the sun forced its way through with difficulty. It produced a strange reflection on the heaving waters that made them look like we floated on a sea of liquid metal. After extended idle contemplation I decided our sea was more akin to aluminum paint than mercury.

The wind again began to veer and at 23 knots was heading for a repeat of last night. Fortunately at 2200 hours the strength began to drop and over the next couple of hours, the air pressure jumped up 4 millibars. Thus we headed into our second night at sea, with winds of 10 to 13 knots in a close to beam reach. We are currently under full sail and making way towards Lanzarote Island at around 7 knots. As I write this we are 300 miles from Puerto Calero at position N 32 55.2' W 010 27.3' at 0200 hours UTM on 7/19/2008.

July 19, 2008

Position N 31 09.9' W 011 48.7' at 2023 hours UTM
Today was a completely different experience from the past two days. Now we were able to cook, sleep, bathe ourselves and even write a few e-mails. The previous days were like trying to live in a tumble dryer. DoodleBug had been tossed around like a plastic bath tub toy and us with it.

With light winds of around 12 Knots, we beam reached all day under full sail. The sky was grey and overcast and the morning felt cold at 75 degrees F. Hard to believe we are off the West coast of Africa in late July. Although the wind had dropped, we were left with a swell up to 10 feet high but these were rounded waves, not steep and breaking like yesterday's. Today it was more of an elevator sensation as the largest swells slid under our stern.

Not a particularly exciting day but we saw schools of fish jumping on the surface and tentatively identified them as mackerel. A fishy smell resolved itself as a six inch long squid that had boarded us and was now drying and decomposing

odiferously. As we headed into our third night at sea, we noticed that we could see ships lights on the horizon at over 12 miles distance. The last time the visibility was this clear was in the Indian Ocean.

July 20, 2008

Yesterday afternoon we had delighted in the light sailing conditions and I had tidied the deck and derigged the poles and stowed them. Unfortunately I had misinterpreted the effects of a forecasted wind shift and thus 0200 hours found Annette and I rerigging the port poles on a now plunging deck. This always makes you feel like "real" sailing, with the wind blowing away the cobwebs of your off-watch repose and the waves hissing by, lit only by the lights of the forward deck flood. We continued into the night with poled Genoa, reefed main and mizzen sails and the wind just a few degrees to starboard of a dead run. A dead run always sounds a comfortable point of sail but of course it isn't. Without a wind component providing some pressure on the sails from the side, there is nothing to dampen a side to side roll. Dawn showed that the sky was completely overcast and the wind was now directly over the stern at 18 knots. It was cold! The temperature stayed at 73 degrees until mid afternoon and the wind from the stern was blowing into the normally sheltered cockpit, while the crew grumbled about elephants plowing through snowfields and looked for icebergs and polar bears in the seas off the African Sahara in late July.

As the day wore on we acquired a large swell from the stern that was a few degrees off the wind driven waves. The result was a series of ten footers from behind, with a random element rocking us violently from side to side and occasionally throwing spray aboard. We had winged the main sail and were nevertheless making steady progress to the southwest. At 1530 hours we had put the main sail away, as the wind had now swung a few degrees and with the wave induced roll of DoodleBug, the 20 plus knots of wind would slide behind the mainsail and back it for a few seconds, before it snapped back to its intended rig, with a mast shaking bang. In the haze on the horizon we spotted the small island of Alegranza the most northerly of the chain containing Lanzarote, our destination. The crew's mutinous grumblings died away to a whisper as the islands began to draw closer. We could now see villages ashore where the clusters of homes stood out as bone white against the dark and almost treeless lava flows of the island.

As we passed the port of Arricefe we were pursued by an armada of small craft. There were led by four large tugs or fire fighting vessels in line abreast and behind these in scattered ranks, were perhaps forty or fifty small craft such as power boats, yachts and the like. What was going on? We had not seen another small boat since leaving Gibraltar. By now we were on a beam reach and with the wind gusting from 15 to 20 knots, DoodleBug was hurtling over the still rough seas at up to 10 knots. This mob wasn't going to catch us! As we drew ahead, the Armada turned back again to land and their destination faded into haze and puzzlement.

The airport was just ahead on the starboard side and an almost continuous stream of aircraft passed overhead to land. Could the island support that many tourists? Where were they all coming from on a Sunday night? Finally we sighted our destination marina of the Puerto Calero and turned behind the breakwater just as the sun went down behind the low volcanic hills. We slid into the reception dock and tied up at 2040 hours at position N 28 54.9' W 013 42.4' DoodleBug is in the "Islas Canarias" - the islands of the dogs.

July 21, 2008 to July 26, 2008
We have sorta' left Europe behind with our departure from Gibraltar but although this is physically true, it is not politically so. When you look up the Canary Islands on the internet travel sites, as a destination they fall firmly under "Europe". Nevertheless, Doodlebug is physically here in Lanzarote and this island group will be our point of departure for crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Our current plan is to leave DB here at the Puerta Calero until November. We will probably continue our voyage by making a short sail to the more westerly islands, before taking off for Barbados around mid-November. It took Columbus five weeks to make the passage from the Canaries to somewhere near the Bahamas and we hope to not only beat this sailing time but also know where we are when we arrive. We have been asked several times why we are making the Atlantic passage in winter, rather than during the fictional European summer. To this we have responded, "Have you ever heard the word, H-u-r-r-i-c-a-n-e?". Hurricanes supposedly are aware that their season ends in November but even if they do not, the insurance companies do. Most companies define a rectangle that encompasses most of the Caribbean and decline coverage for vessels within this rectangle from 1st. July to 1st. November. For this reason, many westerly bound passagemakers leave in late November in order to celebrate Christmas in the Caribbean Seas. Thus the Caribbean sailing season typically runs December through May. Likewise, November is also chosen by the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers - the "ARC" for their annual event. This organization typically pre-books all marina space in the western Canaries for their participants, years in advance. Which is why we are in the easternmost island at present and why the ARC is so thoroughly hated by all "real" sailors.

Lanzarote has been a fascinating island to visit. Much of the island was formed during the volcanic eruptions of 1730 to 1736. The island lies on a tectonic hotspot on the African crustal plate and the area that is now the Timinfaya National Park was once somebody's field. There were supposedly a few warning rumblings before multiple volcanoes began vomiting cubic miles of the easy flowing lava that now covers much of the island. The event reminded me of a Hollywood disaster movie about a volcano. I had never bothered to watch the movie but the theatrical trailer had lava coming up through the ground at a road intersection in Los Angeles. The remainder of the trailer was the usual screaming, vehicle crashes and cries of, "Ohmigod!" Let's all split up!". Of course the Lanzarotean farmer said this in Spanish and then rode off on his camel. Not as dramatic. The 1730's eruption was described by the local parish priest, presumably the only witness with literary abilities.

Although the Islands were occupied by the Arabs around 1,000 AD, they were displaced by the Spanish around 1430 and the Berber inhabitants became "extinct". I noticed that the name "Gran" Canary had been given to one of the islands in recognition of the spirited defense by the local Berber population, presumably in their attempt to avoid becoming "extinct".

At some point the Arabs had introduced camels as the primary draft animal and I had supposed this was prior to the Spanish occupation. When we visited the "Camel Museum", their display simply stated that camels had been used here for more than 200 years. Annette loves the placid swaying motion of camel rides and we just had to stop the rent car and mount up when offered the opportunity. We rode a really laid back camel over the flank of the volcano to the summit of a fumarole before continuing our visit to Timafaya Park. The remainder of the park tour was by motor coach, rather than the preferred camel but the air-conditioned coach crawled along precipices and the lips of calderas almost as sure-footedly. The scene was staggering. The huge basalt lava flows ran to the coast over a wide area and produced an almost barren wasteland of jumbled rock. There were only a few lichen growing on the lava after the passage of nearly four hundred years. By contrast, the Corsican lava flows we visited had trees growing on the lava flows that were but decades old. I presume that here, there is just not enough water to sustain large flora. The motor coach dropped us off near the park restaurant and in the parking lot we watched demonstrations of the current ground temperature. Water poured down a 20 foot pipe became an instant geyser with a satisfying rush of steam. Dry brush dropped into a 10 foot deep open pit burst into flame. The restaurant specialized in barbequing it's meats using the heat from the volcano by mounting a steel grill over a kind of well. As soon as Annette saw that roast chicken was on the menu, we had to stop here. The food was amazingly good for a restaurant targeted at "non-repeat-customer" tourists and the view from our table unforgettable.

For the past week we have been combining sightseeing with the preparation of DoodleBug for both our absence for a couple of months and for an ocean passage. We made the pilgrimage to the island's propane plant and filled up our "20 pound capacity " tank with amazing ease. The last time we filled this was in Turkey, cost US$60 to fill and took a week. In Lanzarote the fill up cost US$10 and was performed while we waited. We have visited propane plants across the planet and they are always a source of adventure. At one plant in New Zealand, there was but one employee qualified to fill a tank with an American style valve fitting. At that time he carefully examined the stamped metal markings on the side of the aluminum tank and converted the empty weight in pounds to kilograms. Then he converted the stated weight of the tank when filled with water from pounds to kilos. Subtracted the two to obtain the water volume; multiplied by the specific gravity of the butane / propane mix he was using and then added this amount back to the empty tank weight, before filling our tank to the computed full weight. In Australia we went to a place that sold barbeques and the girl, who looked about seventeen years old, filled the tank in a few seconds. "How do you know when it is full?", I asked. She said, "There is an overflow valve here. When the liquid propane comes out of this hole, it is full." "Alrighty.....".

This plant was far less entertaining. However, the security man did insist that we reverse our rent car into the space in the empty parking lot. (A Euro study of parking lot accidents showed that most occur when backing out of the space. I'll bet the same study did not examine the incidence of accidents due to backing into the space!). Our empty tank was picked up at the security gate and the refilled tank delivered back to us by fork-lift truck. The tank was too small for the forks, so it was perched on the shelf behind the driver. No fork lift available to get it aboard DoodleBug, we had to schlep it ourselves.

The propane plant lies on the east side of Aricefe and on our return, we stopped at a small "working man's" cafe near the fisherman's wharf. Here we enjoyed fish sandwiches and beer, the local specialty. The unknown white fish was fried in some kind of egg batter and then presented between two slices of bread. Really excellent! We had seconds.

Next stop was at the island's "wine museum". This of course is an excuse for wine tasting. Wine making is one of the few agricultural endeavors that is possible here. The vines are protected from the wind by lava walls or shallow pits dug in the black basaltic gravel. The latter reminded me of photographs of shell craters in "no mans land" of the first World War. The wines we tasted were OK but too sweet for Annette's preference. I only tasted the wine as a gesture of solidarity and will stick to beer for future ethanol intake requirements.

We had decided that Sunday is to be our serious boat work day and so spent Saturday visiting the north end of Lanzarote. We began with a visit to "Cueva de los Verde", a portion of a huge, 5,000 year old lava tube that extends some six kilometers down from the volcano, before passing below the sea. The lighting and sound provided in the upper portion we toured had been under the direction of Cesar Manrique, "visionary artist". He seems to be Lanzarote's version of Santa Fe's Georgia O'Keefe. Georgia couldn't make a go of it in New York, so she moved to Santa Fe to impress the hicks. Ol' Cesar seems to have sold a lot of his work to the local pols, as almost every road intersection on Lanzarote is decorated with one of his pieces. This particular lava tube has supposedly been used by locals in centuries past, to hide from the frequent raids of Berber pirates. The latter seeking slaves and plunder. Maybe they were just looking for relatives who had been "extincted" by the Spaniards. Our tube tour was far less exciting and we stood endlessly in a group of some 50 visitors whilst waiting for the previous groups to move on. Our guide would jabber in Spanish for about 15 minutes and then address us in heavily accented English. "It's from the volcano.". Apparently English is a much more concise language than Spanish. We left before we had to kill her and emerged into the glare of daylight once more.

The next portion of the tube "Jameos del Agua" was acquired somehow by Enrique and turned into his private hang out. I saw no sign of workshops but plenty of fancy swimming pools and bars. Cesar was a contemporary of Picasso and the travel brochure was laced with comments from various forgotten Hollywood greats, who had participated in his festivities. His private hang out seemed like the kind of place that would have wet tee shirt competitions high on the agenda. We never get invited to that kind of party and are justifiably jealous. An amazing place nonetheless.

Our final stop of the day was the "Mirador del Rio". This site has a great view from the northern cliffs of Lanzarotte

and of the nearby island of Graciosa. It cost 9 euros for the pair of us to enter and we were truly amazed at the fact that we had just paid US$15 to enter a bar that didn't even have a stripper. We bought a couple of drinks and gazed at the view. Same view was free from the parking lot.