The Atlantic
Once again.
On our way from Gibraltar to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands , we managed to catch two lovely dorados
(Mahi Mahi). They were each large enough to make several meals for the four of
us. Our first was sashimi, complete with
soy sauce, wasabi and pickled ginger. We
had two great meals of grilled fish and the heads and tails went into the pot
to make a delicious fish soup so every scrap of the fish was used.
We were accompanied on this leg of the journey by a little
canary. It would fly off for a while and
then return and rest on the top of our mast or on the boom. It would not eat or drink anything and disappeared on the second last day. We were hoping that it had arrived in Lanzarote a day earlier than us.
The Canary Islands are
volcanic and evidence of earlier eruptions are everywhere. Lanzarote, our first stop in the Canary Islands turned out to be a disappointment in that
it is extremely dry. The island south of
Lanzarote, Fuerteventura is even more barren
so we decided to give the rest of the eastern islands a miss and head for the
western ones. We visited Tenerife and La Palma .
Tenerife is home to Spain ’s
highest mountain, El Tiede. We took a drive around the northern, greener half
of the island, to the base of the cable car which takes one up to the top of
the mountain. There was a four hour wait to go up and cloud at the top so we
gave that a miss and drove instead through large valleys filled with larva fields. The
quaint old capital of the island, La Laguna, was built in the 16th
century and has cobbled streets, churches and monasteries.
Our next island, La
Palma , a World Heritage Biosphere, has wonderful
forests and plenty of water. It is a popular spot for hiking, although few
tourists stop here. We chose to stop in
Tazacorte, a small town on the western side of the island. The marina is situated at the very edge of
the walls of the towering caldera, the world’s largest, La Caldera de
Taburiente. Pressure is building in the
volcano and it is predicted that the whole western half of the island is going
to break away and slide into the sea sometime before 2515. We drove through banana plantations and cloud covered forest, along a multitude
of dizzy switchbacks to get to the
mountain ridge. We were well above the tree line and the clouds when we reached
the edge of the caldera.
The
International Astronomical Observatory is situated here. Many nations have partaken and there are
large telescopes dotted around the ridge. One of them. the British Sir Isaac Newton reflector is controlled via satellite from Edinburgh . It was cold and windy at the top but the
view is breathtaking.
Although it was raining lower down in the cloud layer, we
had a lovely walk through the forest to a waterfall. Later we sat in a little tavern and dried off
in front of the fire in their fireplace.
One cannot get a correct impression of the size of the
caldera from close up. It was only once
we were many miles out to sea that we could see the whole mountain with its
huge top blown off.
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| Departing the Canary Islands |
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| Caldera de Taburiente |
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| Halloween at sea |
We returned to the Atlantic Ocean once again and around
midnight on the first night, we crossed our path that we had made from the Cape Verdes
to Madeira , back in 2012. Once again we were
seeing the long ocean swells that the Atlantic is known for.
Although they are large, they were mostly behind us, with a fairly
comfortable motion. We were dogged by long patches of no wind. When the wind did
come up, it was always a gentle breeze, under 10 knots and directly behind us,
not ideal for sailing. As a result, we
resorted to doing a lot of motoring. Our
tanks have a range of approximately 2,000nm. if the engine is run at low revs.,
so we kept the boat moving at only 5-6 knots.
By the time we arrived in Martinique ,
we had settled into a daily routine. John caught more fish, a barracuda and more dorado, we did a lot of reading and Mary
and Dimitri had a daily backgammon competition.
We had a roster of 3 hour night watches which worked very well. The crossing from the Canaries to Martinique
took us 21 days and we were happy to make landfall at dawn in Marin, on the
southern end of Martinique.
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