On Thursday, May 16, Taniwani's adventures for 2013 started by leaving the Marina of Quinta do Lorde to briefly anchor just around the corner at Baia de Abra. Next day, 3 in the morning the alarm got us up as planned and by 3:30 we were under way out of the bay and on a course to lead east of the Islas Desertas in an SouthSouthEasterly direction to the Island of Graciosa, a smaller island just north of and separated by just a narrow channel from the better known Lanzarote. With the wind around North we had a gentle but still swift passage, mostly wing-wing under poled out Genoa and main. Once past the Desertas, several freighters kept crossing our path and on two occasions we actually had to alter course to stay safe.
After 270 miles and 35 hours we dropped the hook in Baia Francesa, the inly bay in the south of Graciosa where anchoring is still allowed. Nowadays the whole area north of Lanzarote, including its northern tip, is a national park and a stay has to be pre-annouced and is limited to 10 days. The area is simply fabulous and in the high season, many yachts cramp into the only remaining anchorage. But this early in the season we just found one other British yacht anchored fairly well into the large bay. As we are now traveling in company with our old friends Kikki and Henry on Endelig, we made sure they would find a good spot between us and the other yacht, when they would come in after darkness fell. And it all worked out exactly to the plan.
While still a bit cold, and untypical that early in the year, with the strong NE-wind usual in the summer, we really enjoyed the four days we spent there. The scenery is simply spectacular, the view from the rim of the volcano stunning and the little village of Calheta del Sebo just awaking from a sleepy winter season is in the best possible state, with just few early tourists and the restaurants offering huge amounts of excellent sea-food at bargain prices.
Given a plan to sail along most Canary islands and then to the Azores and all their islands before our friends would depart northbound in late August, we had to eventually move on a bit and sailed down the east-coast of Lanzarote to a huge Marina, Puerto Calero, from where we plan to explore Lanzarote. Unfortunately, our plans are now a bit at jeopardy, since we discovered a crack on Taniwani's boom, when we again sailed wing-wing along the island. Nothing exciting caused it and so it is probably simply metal fatigue around the high-stress area where the boom-vang attaches. To be on the safe side, we just took the main down and sailed on with just the genoa.
Now we are just exploring our options: One is to have it repaired here, by what seems a competent shipyard, fabricating and welding on some re-enforcement , or by checking with Selden in Sweden what time it takes to ship a boom-extrusion, (the tube), to Tenerife. As we know know, the repair approach would keep us here for a week and is the more likely path. Endelig could move on a few days earlier and we would catch up in Gran Canaria. We shall see and we will keep you posted.
