Terrific to the Canary Islands

Four days of sitting in "Terrific" the forecast looked to be ok for a trip south down past Morocco to the Canary Islands.

The forecast was indicating that we should have high teens and low 20's in the wind department and seas should be "1-2m". Well for the first 5 hrs it was 30 knots, big seas again (mostly caused by the wind and current, but also because the water is only 100m deep, so it becomes a bit like a bath tub). After about 5hrs of this, things started to sort themselves out, wind backed off a little, and best of all the waves started to get some pattern to them.

As we went further south the wind became lighter, so the engine went on at times, other times theSpinnaker was up, but basically it was light. So what we thought would be a 3 day passage ended uptaking 4, it was calm so we were happy to plod along slowly. It's either too much or too light...

We arrived on Friday 9th November into one of the Islands called "Isla Graciosa" (for those of youwithmaps/charts or Goggle earth). We spent a few days there on anchor - it was an absolutely stunninganchorage and the surrounding volcanic landscape was a contrast to anything we had seen! We were happy to be out of the Med with it's crap winds and seas. We did a hike to the top of one of the volcano's - the true Aussie way, no map, no guide and thongs.. - and met a guy from Holland on the way - who seemed very stressed about which way to go to get to the top of the crater...and he had the map.....whatthe??? - "Mate, the top is upwards, not left or right, just up"!!! Anyway he tagged along with us andwe all climbed up the top where we were rewarded with stunning views, of the anchorage andLanzarote. It is just a moonscape of a landscape - Awesome.

The main town, if you can call it that, is made up of low white houses sitting in the sandy streets,no made roads, no traffic lights - no traffic. The only down side was there seemed to be a lot ofGermans, rather large ones stripping off their clothes and strutting along the beach. What is itwith Zi Germans and clothes... or lack there of?After spending 4 days in Graciosa we needed to get a wiggle on and head south to Lanazrote as we hadsome friends from "Ocean Breezes", a boat we sailed through the Pacific with in 2005, flying down from the UK for a visit.

More on Lanzarote soon......

J&J