So far we have been sticking to our plan to keep this years voyage through the Canaries limited to a few islands an on the short side, as we also want some time in the Azores before heading to Vigo to again join Alfredo Lagos' wonderful gathering for the so called Rally Bayona.
By now, (Sunday, June 8) we are at our last port in the Canaries, ready to head off to the Azores tomorrow or more likely Tuesday when the wind conditions should be better.
Since our last report we had sailed over night from one side of the Canaries to the other, from Lanzarote to La Palma. In La Palma we went into the marina in Santa Cruz, a place we had been to many times before. This time it was a bit rainy and windy and so we only stayed for three days before sailing south to the western side of Gomera, to the second of our favourite anchorages in the Canaries. There beneath the tall wall at Valle Gran Rey, one usually finds a calm anchorage even if the NE trade is roaring just around the corner.
This time we started to have doubts, whether the anchorage would indeed be calm, as the wind was strong and almost from the North. But again, only a few hundred meters from the the anchorage the fierce wind stopped.
We spent almost a week at this place, which only has one disadvantage, being in a dead spot of cell phone coverage, which meant riding the dinghy to the harbour nearby and walking through most of the village of Vueltas before picking up a net and being able to send and receive e-mails.
But immediately in the harbour is a decent car rental place and so we got a car for two days to tour the island. During our stay, the wind picked up even more and while we still had nearly no wind at the anchorage the last night at anchor wasn't particularly comfortable as a big swell set in rolling Taniwani beyond the point of comfort.
We had thought of staying until the wind abates a bit, but then decided we would prefer a rough ride to Tazacorte on the west side of La Palma over another such night at anchor. We knew that the 50 miles would be mostly rough, as the wind accelerates around the islands, first around Gomera and then around the south of La Palma. Our estimates were surpassed as we metered 46 kts of true wind at times and for a long stretch never had below 35 kts. In addition our autopilot had decided it wasn't his day to be on duty, so Harald had to steer for most of the time. Which was actually fun except for being salt pickled.
The last miles in the lee of La Palma were calm as expected and a serious brain wash fixed the autopilot. Apparently just looking at the settings from to different control heads to help a friend who had problems with the same autopilot, had confused ours to the degree, that it would appear to steer straight, but slowly coming off course and when the error was big enough it would complain.
Anyway it's all fine again and we ended our trip in the marina of Tazacorte. A place highly recommended by many friends, but we had never been in with Taniwani, just looked at it on some of our car trips around the island. And it is indeed a place one can like. More sunny and less windy than Santa Cruz and still not hot if you have a good shade. Huge breakwaters provide shelter of a perfection that you can barely notice the omnipresent Atlantic swell.
It is also a popular fishing harbour and if you don't mind that kind of ambience (noisy generators and fishy smell), it is a perfect place.
Again it is easy to get a rental car brought to the marina and so we had some really wonderful tours. We love these wonderful pine trees with their black bark and intensely green needles. And up at the highest points, at 2400m everything was blossoming, a beautiful sight. While we have been up there a few times, we never had these colours and for the first time we had guided tour through the biggest observatory, which was rather interesting.
We had some trouble posting pictures in this blog, so I'll try with a few and radically reduced in size. For more pictures and better quality look at the photo stream at:
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen