After Lanzarote & Fuerteventura we headed on to 3 more Canary Islands.

Gran Canaria

We did a night sail across to Gran Canaria, arriving in the early morning, which lead to some lovely views around the busy port.

The anchorage here is attached to the marina, and thus you have to pay a small fee just to anchor. The small fee is only a couple of euros, and this is great in comparison to some anchorages in the UK such as Salcombe that require you to pay around £15 a night to anchor near the river mouth…

We didn’t have lots planned from Gran Canaria, but generally explored, relaxed and ate some tasty food.

On one of our trips to land, we spotted the boat Magic of Bermuda whom we had previously met in Gibraltar. We ended up spending most of the day aboard Magic chatting, drinking tea, and telling stories. On the dock, we also met a French couple looking for a lift to Tenerife, and we decided to pickup our first hitchhikers.

The ARC leaves from this marina in Gran Canaria, so the marina was extremely busy with ARC boats.

Another little tradition of the ARC is boats painting rocks on the breakwater before they leave.

We had a very peaceful night sail to Tenerife with our 2 new friends. They cooked, we sailed. One of them, unfortunately, got a little seasick, but a good sleep out on deck helped them out. They were planning on taking part in a residential art project starting the next week in Tenerife, where they sail across the Atlantic on a catamaran and create art (a project run by @circusspacepirates)

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Tenerife

We stopped off in Tenerife, dropping off our 2 hitchhikers. Our next guest was also going to be arriving in while we were here. The plan was for them to join us down to Cape Verde and then across the Atlantic.

As soon as Gareth arrived we sent him straight up the mast!

On the whole, Tenerife was another short stop off, where we restocked on Gas, food and did some final maintenance before setting off on what would be our longest crossing yet in the next weeks.

La Gomera

The sail to La Gomera was once again a night sail, but this time with 3 crew, meaning we could try with just a single shift each on watch.

Here we met up with SV Blue Note who we had planned to sail from the Canaries to Cape Verde with us in a little race, and they had also joined another Dutch boat called Extress who would also leave on the same day.

The story that we have to tell for La Gomera is the afternoon we nearly stole another boat’s anchor!!!

But that’ll come in the next post!