Herbert

November 29

Motoring under the pedestrian drawbridge out of Marina Lagos saw us on our way to Lanzarote. We had lost Jan to seasickness and abandoned him in the marina so we were a trio once again. Out in the ocean, the swell was larger and more spread out than on the way by Tarifa and Herbert started feeling the effects and went below for relief.

It had only been a day since he’d started his seasickness tablets so I was optimistic he would be OK. The best thing he could do was take care of himself in the meantime rather than try and push through and prolong the discomfort. Thomas and I had everything in hand but, as a duo, it could get tiring if Herbert was still laid out for an extended period.

The sails were goose winged again and we were rolling around but making good speed.

The next day, Herbert was feeling better and was even functional below decks: the acid test for seasickness when you lose sight of the horizon and by the third day, he was as fine as Thomas and me. Totally cured. He had his sea legs and recovered as a fully participating member of the crew.

Every day we were blessed with good weather with the swell easing too and our speed held fast. Once again, the days were merging into each other one sunny day after another bracketed by dry moonlit nights. The decision to go to the Canaries via Lagos was genius. The route looks a little crazy on the map until you overlay the weather front coming in the opposite direction. Anna had told me there was heavy rain and thunder in Gibraltar on the day of our departure. Consequently, we got the very best of the sailing weather, making good time all the way.

3 Dec

Night fell and the moon rose, full and fat. Tomorrow was supposed to be a supermoon but it appeared to have come early for Pantelisa on the Atlantic. The wind died away during the night, just for a few minutes. I hated it, not because of the lack of speed, but because the waves would rock Pantelisa about from side to side and the empty sails would flog banging the boom at the limits of the mainsheet and preventer line in the silent darkness.

4 Dec

I came out on watch at midnight, I could see the lights on the north shore of Lanzarote. An unlit rock was noticed on Navionics on the phone but wasn’t marked on our Raymarine plotter, we had long past the range of the downloaded plotter maps for Turkey and Greece. Against the indigo sky, a black silhouette to the port bow toward the horizon was easily visible in the full moonlight. Thomas marked a waypoint to the rock’s position and emphasised to avoid it, “Do not steer to that waypoint.” Tell that to the wind.

Instructions were to keep west but the wind was veering more directly astern to push us on a more easterly track as I steered to protect the mainsail from a gybe. The line on the plotter that indicated the course we were heading was swinging about like a windscreen wiper, catching the rock in its sweep. Odds were that we would avoid the rock by a couple of miles as long as the wind didn’t veer further westward with its spontaneous gusts but there’s no guarantee what the wind would do. If it did veer, we may have had to adjust course and to pass to the eastern side instead and gybe for the westerly track.

We arrived in Arrecife at 8am, entering the harbour under sail before firing up the motor and hauling down the main. Marina Lanzarote is a beautiful Marina serviced by Cafes on the Marina promenade and Tapas bars around the old fishing harbour. It was warmer here than Gibraltar too. I set about cleaning the boat while Thomas organised the sail and wind vane repairs. there was good news on the repair front. The sailmaker could come today and the Raymarine engineer had parts on hand and could troubleshoot the system tomorrow

I spend all day updating my blog and check the admin edits in WordPress. Completing two blog posts in one day is pretty tiring and a waste of good weather in an unexplored location but since there is no internet access at sea, it has to be done now if it is done at all. Herbert had a friend visiting Lanzarote and after a brief introduction on the boat, he left to spend the day with her instead of two salty sailors.

Don’t wait up was the message I inferred from their departure. The evening was soon upon us and I invited Thomas to dinner and after browsing the Tapas bars around the old fishing harbour, we happened upon “Cala” and enjoyed a spontaneously pleasant evening with fine Tapas and Lanzarote wine from grapes grown actually in pits dug in the volcano.

Upon our return, Herbert was waiting up for us. He had only just missed us when we left the boat. The irony of my “don’t wait up” thought was amusing, if only for me.

5 Dec

Things looked promising for departure tomorrow so victualling had to be done for the long voyage across to the Caribbean. My least favourite job of sailing but eased by having an accomplice, Herbert. Herbert and I located Mercadona which couldn’t deliver until Thursday since it was a public holiday tomorrow Wednesday, so we ended up in Hiper Dino. Pretty soon we were two trolleys fully laden with groceries and €340 lighter.

Herbert was on a mission to source some fishing hooks to replace ours that had rusted away between Turkey and Gibraltar. He sent a photo to check whether they were the right ones. I told him they looked fine but when I saw them live they were 4 times as big as the old ones: an error of relative scale in the photograph. These were shark hooks. 18:55 and still no grocery delivery. Waiting onboard Pantelisa was pointless so I went to the cafe joined later by Herbert and Thomas. We were enjoying a beer at the cafe with a clear view of both the car park and pontoon gate. Seconds after our order arrived, the Hiper Dino van turned up and the occupants set about loading crates onto their barrow and we escorted them down to the boat. After two trips, Pnatelisa’s cockpit was stacked with carrier bags full of food, beer and wine.

6 Dec

The wind vane fault was confusing the engineer. The transducer at the top of the mast was proven to be faulty and the repaired one still didn’t work. It was either the cable in the mast or the control box.

A test of the control box revealed it was faulty too. Why? We were puzzled until Marco asked, have you been near any lightning?

Sicily! We were in it with strikes as close as 100 metres in the same storm that tore our mainsail in half. We hadn’t looked at the wind vane when we limped under motor into port in Palermo. I had assumed that the repair of the steaming light in Palermo disturbed the cable of connectors to the wind vane instruments.

With the repair complete we installed the Genoa that had been neatly strengthened and folded on the pontoon from the night before and we were ready to go.

With spirits high, we went for a farewell drink at the local cafe and headed out into the harbour to calibrate the wind vane. Two cruise ships were moored there but we still had room to circulate clockwise until the computer said OK. Three blasts from the Tui cruise ship’s horn indicated that her engines were astern and we were 200 metres behind her. It was time to make a sharp exit abandoning the calibration. We could mentally compensate for the thirty-degree error in the wind direction but the calculation for true windspeed would be incorrect. The main thing was that the autopilot could now steer to the wind. instead of only to a bearing.