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Baia da Mordeira, Sal, Cape Verde

Baia da Mordeira, Sal, Cape Verde

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This was our final stop on the island of Sal after leaving Palmeria.

As you can see, we didn’t make our way directly to the anchorage, instead sailing around the bay a little.

What were we doing you might ask?

Playing around on the SUP behind the boat we would answer!

This anchorage ended up being a lot of fun. The exception was the seemingly hundreds of flies that would fly through the boat every single day…

The snorkeling was pretty good, the water was clear, and warm enough to comfortably stay in for hours if you wanted.

We kept seeing turtle heads pop up above the water, but no matter how often we tried to see them under the water, we always failed.

While at anchor we did a little fishing off the back of the boat after seeing the tasty-looking fish swimming around the boat, and we were actually quite successful.

We caught a couple of little tiny fish which we used for bait, as well as a set of small fly lures which landed us a tasty little sea bream

The live bait did get a bite, but unfortunately, the line broke and we never found out what it was.

This prompted a little BBQ aboard Extress with Danae too where we all got chatting more.

We discovered that Danae had a wing foil setup, and the next day we were invited to have a go! On the whole, we were pleased at how well it went! Maybe this is the next toy we should buy? 😉

As the swell picked up, it curved around the headland corner that was protecting us and started to bring swell directly into the beach.

This led once again to another little SUP surfing opportunity, this time within paddling distance of the boat (though it was straight onto rocks)

As the swell continued to build, it also started reaching the beach which made for some better surfing (but we didn’t get any pictures). The following day multiple surf schools showed up to surf this break.

This also lead to some quite interesting swell rolling straight through the anchorage.

By this point, Danae had left to head on to the next island, but alongside Extress we stayed for another night. Extress threw out a stern anchor and we moved further off shore into some deeper water to lessen the effecter of the swell.

Although this swell rolled right through the anchorage, it didn’t end up being an uncomfortable nights sleep for us.

Lanzarote & Fuerteventura

Lanzarote & Fuerteventura

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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.

And horses!

Thanks, Fuerteventura, you were great!