Dia de Canarias!

Today is the National Day of the Canary Islands. Ingeborg and I went to Pueblo Canarias, a museum/restaurant complex, where there was going to be traditional dancing and music. It was very nice! Colourful costumes and guitar music, and also some traditional songs which seemed to be well known among the audience! We took lots of photos and videofilms, so we'll try to make a small thing for YouTube again. Tomorrow the shops are closed because of today's celebration, so we'll have to find something else to do instead of the planned provisioning..
Noonsite (a sailors website) reported that a lot of timber logs have been observed in the waters between here and Cape Verde Islands lately, appearantly of unknown origin. We'll have to find out more about this as it would not be nice to run into one of them during the dark night.

May month in Las Palmas.

We have enjoyed many weeks in Las Palmas now, but start to look forward to the Atlantic crossing at last! There are always some more preparations you could do, but I think we have covered the most important now. The captain is away for some days, and this trip that came up is the real reason we haven't left already. It has been good to have some quiet weeks for the teenagers aboard also, as there was some studying that had been neglected for some time. Anyway, now Ingeborg has had several tests and seems to have absorbed the curriculum that was scheduled. Thorstein has also had progress on his part, but we need to start a more formalised program for him now.

May month is filled with holidays in Norway, and we have been lucky to find other Norwegians to celebrate them with. Ingeborgs birthday was a success even if the cream cake fell upside down on the cockpit floor.. 17th of May is the National Day of Norway, and we were invited for a party aboard one of the other Norwegian boats. Norwegian food, Grieg music, singing and talking made it a very special day for us.

The weather is getting warmer all the time, but it has not been very hot here in Las Palmas, yet. It has probably been more sunny on the south coast, but we are actually glad for temperatures below 20deg when we go to sleep..

We had a walk in the old city district Veguetas one of the days, and last night Ingeborg and I made a film out of our recordings. Have a look!

Gjertrud

St. Patricks Day, Gibraltar!

Just found a short film I took while celebrating St. Patrick's Day in Gibraltar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZr4KkdUaiI
Enjoy!

Still here in Las Palmas!

We are still here, preparing for the next step. We think it will be Brazil somewhere, if we are not stopping at the Cape Verde Islands. But first we must do a few things, like installing an extra solar panel, repair some scratches on the bow.., change a broken piece of the watermaker, hook up the SSB, install the Hydrovane... And Ingeborg and Thorstein have a period of more intense studies as we don't know how easy it will be while we are underway. Well, we have to know where we are also, so last week-end we rented a car to see more of the island. We drove down to the south where we had been with the boat earlier. Walked around in Playa del Ingles and in Arguinegin together with all the tourists. Then we headed north, through the mountains and found some of the very "scenic routes". Some road blocks were poorly marked so we ended up with some detours. But it was a wonderful landscape, strange rock formations and the view over to Tenerife and Teide behind clouds and mist. A remote finca had put up a stall by the road where they sold wine, honey and various other of their produces. We bought a bottle of wine but haven't tasted it yet. I'm afraid it won't gain much from storage.. so we'll taste it before we leave. We have also seen that there is a museum presenting the original inhabitants of the islands here in Las Palmas, Pueblo Canarias. I hope we find time to visit before we leave.

Gjertrud

Las Palmas!

We have arrived safely in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, after a smooth sail from Gibraltar. Originally we planned to stop for a day in Lanzarote, but after a couple of days at anchor south of Isla Graciosa we decided to go directly to Gran Canaria. Anniken, Ingeborgs friend will arrive tomorrow, and we didn't want to have a too tight time schedule. The summer has arrived also, with a forecast of sunny days and 20 degC all of next week.
As indicated the weather has been good for sailing over the Easter week. Even if the first days were a bit too calm and later it was a bit rolly with the Atlantic swells. But all in all within the limits of what is good sailing conditions. We have tried the cruising chute and the mizzen staysail for the first time. Really, colorful and nice sails for the light winds of the first days. We have seen a lot of dolphins, and even observed how they were surfing just below the surface when the waves was big enough.. It looked as if they had a real good time, too!
More scary was it to encounter a fishing boat that must have sunk just before we came. Only the tip of the bow was above the surface, while another fishing boat was patroling the area to make sure no-one would hit the wreck!

Setting sail again

After almost 3 weeks in Gibraltar, we are now setting sail again, this time our destination is the Canary Islands! It will be the longest trip yet, at 688 Nm, but if the weather doesn't misbehave it should take about 5 to 6 days. The island we are aiming for is Gran Canaria.

In Gibraltar

We are now moored in Ocean Village Marina, Gibraltar, after a pretty hard trip from Cartagena. We did get the wind with us this time, but when it reaches storm strength, it isn't that comfortable anymore. It took 3 days. All crew were well when we came to port.

Then we experienced another storm yesterday night. This time our boat was struck into the concrete pontoon, which we obviously couldn't let happen. The anchoring rope also fastened itself in our propeller. Some english guys came over and helped us out so that we got a line from another pontoon directly behind the boat, holding us off. This whole thing took a few hours, and we didn't get to bed before around 3am.