Time for the longest crossing yet, the Canaries down to Cape Verde.
In theory, an easy crossing, as you should be able to follow the trade winds that run down the coast of Africa before they head across the Atlantic ocean. These are the same winds followed by Christopher Columbus and are well known.
And it was indeed fairly straightforward.
In terms of the sailing, we set off just before noon and an hour or so just motoring to get out of the lull to the south of the Island.
Blue Note left first, with us closely following behind. Extress needed to go to the harbor to fill up with water and they left roughly 1 hour after.
Blue Note, motoring in the lull
After that, we spent most of the first day on a broad reach while trying to stay in the shelter of La Gomera to avoid swell that was still hanging around in the Atlantic.
On the first evening, we switched to a run using our twin-head sail setup (1 Genoa & 1 Ghoster). We poled the ghoster out on our large spinnaker pole, while poling out the geno using the main boom.
We remained that way until the final day (day 6), when we switched back to a broad reach.
This was the first trip that we were sailing with other boats and tried to stay in VHF contact where possible. We all radioed each other on the first evening to compare positions, but at this stage we could all still see each other on AIS.
Both Blue Note and Extress had headed a little further west than us to start.
On the second day we could no longer see Blue note on AIS or reach them over the VHF. We managed to keep up daily communication with Extress reporting positions. The race was on!
Due to the position reports, we managed to roughly track where everyone was, and although we couldn’t talk to Blue Note or see them on AIS constantly, they seemed to pop up once a day so toward the start so we could also track their course.
In the map below, we are in green, Extress in orange and blue note in Blue.
(Yes we took this race very seriously)
During the last night, Extress crossed over our track and started to overtake us. We saw this coming, but didn’t want to change our sail plan in the middle of the night, so let it happen. This lead to Extress arriving 1 hour before us even though we were gaining on them at some points of the last day.
We arrived just after dark, but anchoring was made easy by a local guy called Jay who came over to us and directed us to a nice little spot on the far side of the anchorage.
Extress, who we had only spoken to over VHF, called us up to invite us over for drinks, so after a quick dinner, we headed over and met the 4 Extress crew as well as 2 from Danae, another dutch boat we had not yet met.
We had a few nice wildlife interactions on this crossing, with a bird coming and landing on deck for a little rest overnight. It found one of the only sheltered places on the foredeck, under the anchor windlass.
We also saw a group of whales chilling at the surface, possibly sleeping. They were only 10-20 meters away from us as we passed.
Once again, cool wildlife brings out the best squeaks from all of us.
There we were, in La Gomera, snorkeling around the anchorage looking at all the little fishies, when on the bottom we saw an anchor lying sideways that didn’t appear to be attached to a boat.
After diving down, looking for chain, and taking a picture we decided that it must have been dropped at some point? And who knows, maybe this is a free anchor for us? It’s certainly not set as it should be (in the correct orientation).
(Yes while writing this now we can see the 3 links of anchor chain just covered by sand)
We went back to the boat to prepare to try and retrieve it, bringing back the dinghy, a bouy and ropes etc.
After another dive down to ~10 meters we had a rope around the anchor, however just as we attached it we lifted the anchor revealing the chain attached to it. (sadface)
After a more thorough investigation, this anchor was indeed attached to a boat, however, the boat was much further away than we were expecting for the depth (they must have had lots of chain out), and was not in the direction you would expect it to be (the anchor was pointing the wrong way and the chain running back underneath it).
The conclusion here is that they anchored by dumping their anchor and a bunch of chain as fast as possible, never really pulled back on it to set it properly. So rather than dug in, it just lay at an odd angle on the surface.
For comparison, this is what our anchor looks like while set…
Note you can barely see it, as most of it is beneath the sand.
Anyway…
We had to dive down once again to remove the ropes! No free anchor for us, but also glad we didn’t actually pull it up at all…
Make sure you set your anchor!!!! Otherwise 1) you might drift off and 2) We might come and try to steal it
You can read more about setting an anchor on WikiHow (but I am sure there are better resources).
6. Use your engine to give the anchor a final hard set.
This is called snubbing the anchor, and jams a set anchor more firmly into the bottom. Have your helmsman reverse hard until the rode straightens out, then kill the engine. Check your bearings again as your helmsman does this, to double check the anchor hasn’t pulled free.
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)
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!!!
As you may be able to tell, we have fallen quite behind with our blog posts, we have just been having far too much fun and doing too many longer crossings.
We are currently in Barbados having just celebrated Christmas in an Airbnb!
But enough about what’s happening now, time to jump back and catch up!
You can already read about our adventure to the Canaries from Tarifa, exploring the first island, and hopping down to Lanzarote, and that’s where this post will start, exploring the Canaries.
Lanzarote
From the marina in Puerto Calero we hired a car to explore Lanzarote. Apparently, all hire cars here are hybrid Fiat 500s.
We headed to one of the main island tourist attractions (the volcano and park) to get our first volcano experiences of the trip.
There were hot water jets, volcanic ovens which cooked food you could eat in the restaurant, burning of wood, not gravel etc.
For some of us, this included a little flashback to our childhood, having visited the island before.
While exploring the Island we spotted a Decathalon and finally bought something we have been thinking about for some time… a SUP!
(It’s going to be getting quite some usage in the future)
Fuerteventura
On the way to Fuerteventura we saw a very nice-looking Risso dolphin or 2.
We ended up in a cheap marina recommended by our friends on SV Blue Note called Grand Tarajal.
Though generally sunny, one evening we got our first real thunderstorms here since setting off from the UK. The lightning was all in the distance and we managed to get a few nice pictures.
From the marina, we got a local bus up the coast to a town with a resort and hired another car, once again a Fiat 500, and started exploring the island some more.
We headed to the northwest coast to find some surf to try out our new SUP.
And you know what they always say, the best car for unpaved road exploration is a hire car. And that car is a Fiat 500!!! The video below doesn’t do the whole journey justice, and some parts felt like true offroading.
After a 30-minute bumpy ride which nearly caused us to turn around twice, we found ourselves at a lovely beach (and also saw that the northerly route might have been a little easier drive).
The SUP was a “Medium” Itiwit Inflatable Stand Up Paddle SUP (Length: 9′ (274.5 cm) Width: 33.1″ (84 cm) Thickness: 4.9″ (12.5 cm)), one of the surfiest looking SUP they had in Decathlon when we bought it. Also with 232 liters of buoyancy, it should be floaty enough for both of us to use to paddle to shore in the future.
It was quite a bit of fun…
This beach also had a great set of rocks which included a little pool of warm water that got the occasional wave into it.
Fully recovered from what ended up being a long, slightly swell-themed sail, we started heading down the coast of Lanzarote.
We hadn’t visited a marina in almost 3 weeks, so really wanted a decent shower. Puerto Calero looked a good distance away and could be a good starting point for getting to Fuerteventura. So off we went
This was mostly an easy downwind sail, with a little rain to start…
We called the marina on VHF 9, they quickly responded and said we could stay for 2 nights.
First, they had us moor on the fuel pontoon to fill out paperwork.
Before then moving to one of the most expensive accidents waiting to happen (between 2 million pound catamarans) alongside the pontoon.
Fortunately, we pulled off a smooth docking without a hitch.
Kathryn was still crazing pizza, as we didn’t find one in La Graciosa, so this was top of our list.
There was a little place called MargaRita on the other side of the marina, and the pizza there was truly amazing.
After a day of recovery from our rather long crossing (we mainly lay around, sleeping eating and watching TV), we headed to shore to wonder around the Volcanic island.
First, we headed up the closest volcano-like thing, where we got a great view of our part of the island, nearby beaches and anchorage.
We then headed to the north shore to see the breaking waves and the few people surfing them.
The north shore also had many rock pools with all kinds of sea life in them.
The most interesting of which was a collection of hermit crabs all trying to get in line to swap shells. We watched for quite some time, but none of them could decide which one should take the new larger shell that they had found.
There was also a self righting sea snail.
Kathryn was craving pizza, so we headed to the main town of the island in search. There was a pizza place on Google maps that should have been open, but sadly not.
We ended up at the popular local restaurant where we had black squid ink paella.
The walk back to the anchorage took around 20-30 minuites and was lit by moonlight.
We spent much of the rest of our time in this anchorage snorkeling around. The water was so clear and warm we could see to the bottom with ease and didn’t need a wetsuit.
This also gave us an opportunity to dive on our anchor to see how close to the rocks we were.
After waiting out all of the wind, we were finally ready to set off across the Gibraltar straight to our next destination.
We hadn’t decided if we were going to stop at Tangier or not, as we had heard from some friends that it was going to be full, so also had a plan to head all the way to Rabat.
Not long after setting off we quickly got the rod out as Kathryn saw a giant tuna leaping out of the sea. Within a few minutes, there was a bite, and we spent the next 15 minutes (it felt like) reeling in our catch whilst underway.
A tuna! Our first catch since northern Spain (we think).
As we approached Tangier we saw a whole bunch of boats leaving. This was the moment that we started re-evaluating weather options as well as considering how long customs can take in Morocco.
Rather than stop in Tangier, as we were a week behind our plan, we decided to keep going to either Rabat, Essaouira or the Canaries.
Very quickly we found ourselves 3 days into a 5-day sail.
Throughout our sail along the coast of northern Morocco, there was quite a lot of sand in the air, making everything very hazy, kind of like fog.
The weather dropped and shifted, making it look unlikely we could make it to the Canaries before getting caught in the worst of some horrible swell. As the weather continued to develop we were weighing up Essaouira, Agadir or Lanzarote. Also, playing in the sea 😉
The wind shifted back to something more desirable, as we went for it, all the way to Lanzarote!
While talking about how we might be able to go faster with the wind almost directly behind us, we realized that we had not yet used the mizen staysail.
It’s meant for use when the wind is from the beam to almost dead behind the boat, so perfect!
We spent some time figuring out how to hoist it for the first time, and up it went.
We kept the mizen staysail up for at least 1 day, and it managed to keep our average speed at above 6knots. Epic!
This was the point where we saw a large navy ship behind us. Adam also realized that we weren’t listening on channel 16 (we had switched to listen to some weather, but never heard the broadcast).
Upon switching back to channel 16, the navy ship was hailing us (they might have been for some time…).
They wanted to know the details of the boat, how many people were aboard, and if we had any kids of pets. After a lovely little VHF conversation, they said to have a nice sail and then continued on past us.
The wind and swell continued to build, the staysail came down, and we continued the rest of the sail with a reefed main and a working gib.
In the last 12 hours the swell was probably somewhere between 2 and 3 meters, and quite mixed up. There was a primary swell from the north at 2-2.7m, but also some other swell from somewhere east or south ish that made things quite interesting…
The worst of this came at night, but here is a short video from the daytime before, where we capture the swell size quite well we think.
We came in between Lanzarote and the northern island of La Graciosa at about 5am on Saturday, before getting to our anchorage at 6am ish.
The moon was quite full, but unfortunately obscured by clouds so it was quite dark.
The anchorage was full of boats, but we snuck around all of them right to the front next to the beach and dropped anchor in what we hoped was sand according to the satellite view. We held well and headed for some well-deserved sleep! (pictures of where our anchor landed coming in the next post)
Overall our track looked something like this!
Adams Blog: Global “unlimited” data options: Wraptel, Keepgo & Solis
Who knew a 30nm journey to our planned port of Tangier, Morocco could take 5 days? Well, we found out how that’s possible on a sailboat…
On our first attempt at leaving Gibraltar, we had looked at the tidal stream atlas and decided on a time of the day to leave, it turned out to be a not-too-early 9 am start and we knew it was going to be a windward sail so tacking, something we are quite used to but little did we know just how strong the tides really are in the Gibraltar Straights.
We cruised out of the anchorage just north of the border of Gib (so actually in Spain) at a speedy 6knots across the bay in lovely flat seas, we dodged the giant container ships anchored in the bay as we headed for the Southwest side of the bay.
When approaching one of the ships a little too close for comfort we tacked a few times so as not to lose the wind when going past what is basically a huge wall stationed in the water.
Not even 10 minutes later the water started to get choppy, an indication that the tide in that area was strengthening and the wind was going over the surface of the water in the other direction to the flow of water, Hannah Penn powered through under full sail, we felt good that this sail was going to go well.
At this point the wind speed increased to about 30knots, we reached the other side of the choppy water where there was a strange calm area of sea, we dropped the mizzen as the wind was not going to let up and at the same time found we had left the ladder down in the water at the back of the boat, I took the helm and Adam had to retrieve the ladder with his long arms as we were very healed over.
After sailing into the calm water we noticed our SOG (Speed Over Ground) dropped and our heading which was once a very good into-wind angle suddenly point further and further downwind.. to the point where instead of going forward we were actually headed backward at a diagonal straight into the Mediterranean sea!!
Clearly, the tide was doing something very strange, a phenomenon which we had read could happen around a headland we were passing, Punta del Carnero, leaving the bay and entering the Straights, we had to start the engine as our speed, eastward towards the Med had increased to a staggering 2.5knots whilst still sailing West!
By this point, the wind was still gathering in strength and we knew we were not going to make it to Tangier so 1.5nm into our journey through the Straights we looked into bail-out options, luckily at that moment when motoring at over double the RPM we would usually run the engine at and only managing a meagre 1.5knots over the ground we saw a little cove which looked relatively sheltered in the prevailing conditions, we took that opportunity and headed in checking our trusty Navily app on the way, one review was good enough for us!
We approached the tiny cove (Cala Arenas on Navily) which should have had over 2m of depth below the keel, the depth meter suddenly started dropping much quicker than expected, with 0.8m under the boat we quickly made a turn into the wind and slightly deeper water and dropped anchor, let out 30m immediately and let the boat settle in what was turning into a gale!
So we had arrived in this little cove at about low tide, and this made it lovely and sheltered with a big outcropping of rocks to the windward side of the cove, the wind still howled but the water was flat, we hunkered down after letting out a bit more chain and putting the anchor snubber on to dampen the forces on the boat.
After looking at the tidal stream atlas again wondering why it was so difficult to get into wind we realised we had got the tide timings wrong, by 3 hours! after mistakenly thinking the titles for the pictures were above the relevant information, when in fact they were below.
Waiting it out for 2 days
We stayed in the cove for two nights whilst keeping an eye on the weather, each high tide it got a little choppy as the rocks protecting us got partially submerged, so we created a swell bridle which allowed the boat to sit with her bow into the waves but side-on to the wind.
The rope pictured above attaches to the anchor chain and is also attached to the bow and stern cleats. The chain ends up half way along the side of the boat.
On the 3rd day, we decided it wasn’t worth us trying to get out of the straights until the wind shifted from a Westerly to an Easterly, which was due to happen in another 2 days’ time, so that day we made sure the tides were right and we upped anchor and set off back toward Gib, and fast downwind, down-tide sail that saw us doing over 8knots.
We rounded the corner into the bay and anchored up in the lee of the wind in the southwest corner of the bay.
We tucked ourselves in close to the shore and made the most of our extended trip near Gibraltar by going snorkeling and watching The Witcher on Netflix!
Second Try for Tangier
So the time came when the wind shifted to an easterly giving us a downwind sail, perfect! Now reading the tides correctly, which included making sure you had adjusted for the different time zones (being so close to Spain, Gibraltar and Morocco our phones didn’t know which country to pick up!)
We headed out again and this time was much faster, expecting a very windy sail we only need the genoa out, and even then we only had all of it out for about 1 hour till we decided we would have more steerage if we furled some in. Still, we maintained about 7knots SOG.
We stayed close to the north shore of the straights, well out of the shipping lanes to the south of us, this gave us a little protection from the building waves in the center of the channel.
The time came when we need to make a slight turn south and venture more into the open water, soon though we found ourselves being thrown around a lot in the steep waves which were forming due to the strong tides and equally strong wind, we tried for about 30 mins to make our way out but decided it would be too dangerous when we hadn’t even got a 1/4 of the way across and one wave threw the boat sideways-on to the waves, which were easily higher than the deck. At that point, we turned back north to more sheltered water.
Carrying on, on the north shore we made our way to Tarifa, a Spanish town with an outcropping of land which gave perfect shelter from the building conditions.
We tucked ourselves in behind the breakwater where a number of pro kitesurfers were having a great time in the high winds and flat seas.
Taking shelter from real storm-force winds
We were forced to drop anchor in water much deeper than we would usually choose, about 8m under the keel, which meant we had to let out about 50m of chain because we didn’t want to interrupt the kiters and decided we would move closer after they had finished.
Into the afternoon the wind grew stronger and stronger. We contemplated an alternative anchorage, heading off a little downwind, but it was far less protected and we found ourselves motoring back to Tarifa and moving closer to shore.
We had about 5m of depth, the usual ratio which we use when we anchor is 15m + 2x the distance from the seabed to the bow, so in normal conditions, we would have let out 35m max, but as the wind was due to blow at over 110kph we decided we should probably use the whole lot, which is 60m! and then we used 3 snubber lines equally loaded to the front anchor bollard and two outer cleats to reduce to load that any one line would take as we sway from side to side in the gale.
The evening brought winds of over 50knots (92kph) and it was expected to rise during the night, with the anchor alarm set and with howling winds we tried to get some sleep, it was a restless night, and waking in the morning we found that our wind instruments were no longer working and the boat had a thick veil of salty sand plastered to the front of everything, the windshield, rigging, masts, deck, but at least we didn’t move an inch in the night, our storm anchoring tactics had held firm.
And that is how you achieve going nowhere in 5 days!
Everyone that owns a boat, should regularly check and service their seacocks by turning the regularly and regreasing them when out of the water. We try to make a habit of turning all of our seacocks a few times each month and noticed one of our Blakes seacocks was getting progressively harder to turn.
Somewhere around Cadiz we could no longer turn this seacock. We had no plan of getting out of the water any time soon, but would really rather be able to close it if needed.
We seacock in question is photographed below after servicing it. It’s in the engine bay under the waterline. This seacock is attached to some drainage holes in the cockpit floor. Nice and easy to access and work around!
The seacock after being serviced
After some online research of others with Blakes seacocks saying anything from “careful heating of the outer body” to “hitting as hard as I dared” we came up with a plan to tackle servicing this seacock from inside the boat while in a marina.
Getting it moving again
First, we took the cover plate off the seacock which can easily be removed but loosening and then removing the two bolts on either side of the handle.
The seacock with cover plate removed
We put a spanner around the square part of the seacock at the base of the handle to apply some turning pressure while gently and repeatedly knocking the end of the handle with a hammer.
It would have been nice to put a bar over the end of the handle to be able to apply some more turning force, but we didn’t have anything readily available that fit. A spanner seemed to do the job.
After quite a while of trying to turn and knocking gently in all directions, we thought it wasn’t going to budge, but finally, it started moving.
It was moving, but still very stiff, we wanted to take the whole thing out, give it a clean and regrease before putting it back together again.
Covering plate, spanner, bungs, rags, hammer etc.
Getting it out
With some plastic sheeting covering the engine, and wooden bungs at the ready, we attempted the old switcharoo, replacing the seacock with a hand, and then a bung.
The water sprayed quite high, so we were thankful for the plastic sheet. But we managed to get it out and replace it with a wooden bung with only a Litre or so of water making its way into the engine bay.
The parts & service
All of the parts needed a good cleaning.
We cleaned all of the parts with Swarfaga and wire wool, removing all of the old grease and any built-up gunge acquired from the sea.
All of the parts were then thoroughly greased with K99 Morris water-resistant grease. Primarily the outside surface of the centre of the seacock and bolts.
Getting it back in
Putting it back together was just the reverse of the getting-it-out process, so just as splashy, if not more!
Once the main body is in we bolted the covering plate back on top (not too tight).
After everything was done and dried up it moved with ease without letting any water in at all.
They say you should be able to move your Blakes seacock with your little finger, and here is proof that can easily be achieved, even with the oldest of seacocks.
Links & Reading
We did some other reading, and you might find these links useful.
