23rd October

Thursday 23rd October 2008, day 96. 28° 28’.0 N, 016° 14’.6 W. Marina Atlantico, Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

This comes to you from the marina’s launderette, where two loads of our dirty washing are churning away. The launderette is new and clean, the machines work, and the instructions leave no scope for error. For everyone reading this at home, with the washing machine a commonplace that is only noticed when it breaks down, that may seem a pretty mundane way of starting a blog. For us, it gives an unusual feeling of domesticity!

We are now in Tenerife, in the capital, Santa Cruz, on the north east side of the island. We shall stay here a couple of days, visit El Teide, and also stock up on cans and dry goods and bottles for our Atlantic trip. Anthony and I have both owned up to little bits of unused storage that we had been keeping quiet about – so now they can be used for beer …

Tomia has just come out of the water for a scrub and a fresh coat of anti-foul in a little fishing marina just north of Santa Cruz. She wasn’t too dirty, but it was the last opportunity this side of the Atlantic, and it won’t be until January that we have another chance, with a bit of luck.

Having flicked a dollop of Nitromors onto the chart table during the fit-out, where it lay unseen for three days, I had been excused all duties involving paint brushes. This exemption doesn’t seem to apply to anti-fouling. Oh well.

In fact, the anti-fouling was judged so adequate that I have now been promoted to assistant varnisher (horizontal surfaces only). There is now a fine dribble of varnish on the companionway, and a small smudge on the handle of the kettle. I honestly have no idea how they got there. Poor Anthony, being married to such a klutz.

A funny noise has been disturbing us, and if any sailors reading this have an explanation, please tell us. It’s a crackling sound, a bit like velcro being separated, or the snap, crackle and pop from a bowl of cereal. We were convinced it was fish nibbling at the weed on Tomia’s hull, but the noise continues despite the scrub-down. The hull was in perfect condition when we hauled her out, so it’s nothing dire (at 3 in the morning, the imagination turns to the sound of thousands of tiny bursting bubbles of gel coat). Any thoughts?

In the Canaries, we are firmly back in Spain, just as in Madeira we were in Portugal. This means, hurray!, we are once more in the country of pimientos de padron, which stopped dead at the border between Spain and Portugal, five weeks ago. On the downside, that means we are back in the country of UHT milk – and also in the country of free plastic bags. In Portugal, the bags are as on-message as Peter Mandelson’s spin doctor, sporting the logo “Even on foot, a plastic bag uses petrol”, and cost 5 centimes each. In Spain, the checkout girls take a dim view of your spurning their brightly branded ones for a tatty Tesco bag left over from a previous life.

We had heard bad things about Tenerife being built up, but this north east corner is lovely. Very dry and dramatic scenery; the marina is surrounded by viciously spiked hills, a harsh purplish grey, dotted with green tussocks of some sort of succulent. Santa Cruz is a lovely old town, with lots of art deco buildings, very few tourists, and the general air of being a nice place to live, without being too bothered about adapting their ways to foreigners.

We hired a car while waiting for Tomia to be lifted out, and drove up into the Anaga mountains, stopping at a roadside caff for a delicious lunch of rabbit in piquant sauce. Then an exhilarating walk along the mountain ridge (flattened now by centuries of footsteps, mule and human, to about 6 foot wide) to a tiny village called Taborno. A sign led us up to “Café Hilario” – the smallest, coolest café ever. Hilario has added a fridge and a counter to his 40 sq ft sitting room, ran out of room, and installed the sink on the terrace outside, then whitewashed the walls to give space for his guests to write messages in felt tip pen. The sun shines, the bougainvillea tumbles over the trellis, the view stretches down to the sea, and five tiny kittens stagger in the shade of the banana tree. A great spot.

We scrambled back up the 700 ft to the place where we had lunch – any chance of an ice cream? Incredulous laughter. This is October! It’s the autumn!

19th Oct

Sunday 19th October 2008, day 92. 28° 31’.98 N, 016° 07’.95 W.
Tenerife, Ensenada de Zapata.

It is raining. So we are sitting below, and, just as if we were on our mooring in the Deben, Anthony is reading Yachting Monthly, Mike Pert is lapping up Nigel Calder’s tome on boat electrics and I am catching up with the blog, before having supper, followed by a game of scrabble. Just like being at home. Even down to the marmalade bread and butter pudding in the oven.

Except that tomorrow morning we will all get into the sea before breakfast, and swim to a deserted black sand beach, with volcanic cliffs striated above us, and agaves and prickly pears on the hillsides. Oh, we are so lucky!

4th October

Saturday 4th October 2008, day 77.

Porto Santo is a tiny, bare, volcanic island, about 40 miles NE of Madeira. It has one harbour, with about 20 visiting yachts at any time, all of them en route to the Canaries, and mostly on to the Caribbean, though a couple are heading for the Guyanas, and one for the Panama Canal, and then on to the Galapagos and the Marquesas. Nationalities: Dutch, Norwegian, French, Swedish, Danish, Irish, Belgian, one American, one Canadian. Many of them have been living aboard their boats and sailing the world for years; we feel very new and inexperienced alongside them. At the same time, being part of this cruising community makes our plans seem quite feasible.

The first inhabitants brought rabbits with them for food, which did their usual trick: escaped, bred, and ate every green thing in sight. Reforestation efforts are in place, but as the island gets little rain – for some reason, it is all saved for Madeira - it is an uphill struggle.

Today’s linguistic curiosity: what is a frigideira? Deduct one point everybody (and that includes the spell-checker) who said a fridge or freezer. It’s a frying pan. The recipe does make a bit more sense now!

2nd October

Thursday 2nd October 2008, day 75. 33° 03’.7 N, 016° 18’.8 W. Porto Santo.

We have arrived! A great sail, with the wind in the right direction (ENE), and the right speed (16 – 26 knots) for a whole three and a half days. We had the spinnaker up twice, and most of the rest of the time sailed on the main and the boomed-out jib. Tomia behaved beautifully, and although she couldn’t help rolling and veering when caught by quartering seas, she has never felt other than totally solid and in her right environment.

We passed due west of Gibraltar early on Wednesday morning, quickly followed by Tangier. Rabat was next, on Thursday morning, then Casablanca, and if we went straight east to Africa now, we would arrive somewhere near Cap Beddouza. Suddenly, having been ambling along the coast of Portugal and Spain, safely staying in Europe, we are travelling properly. As long as we were on the Portuguese coast, we could always have decided that ocean crossing wasn’t for us, and that we would turn left and go into the Med. From here, though, it is probably easier to go on, south and west, to the Caribbean, with the trade winds behind us, than to turn back and beat our way 500 miles against the prevailing winds to mainland Europe. So we really are off!

We are also exhilarated and amazed (still) to find that it was possible to take our lives by the scruff of the neck and do what we wanted to do with them.

Life on passage worked pretty well for us. We kept four four-hour watches from eight in the evening, giving us each two decent slugs of sleep. We slept in the little lower bunk just forward of the saloon, well wedged in with the lee-cloth against the boat’s rolling. At change-over, one put the kettle on, roused the other, did a quick handover about the wind, the waves, forecasts, distance made, any potential dangers from other shipping, and then tucked themselves into the berth while the sheets were still warm from the previous body. Then from midday we would both be up, sharing the experience and doing various tasks about the boat before it was time to start getting going on supper.

Preparing food at sea is a whole art-form in itself, with the boat continually in motion, and any locker ready to violently eject its entire contents if opened at the wrong point of a roll. The sea-cook needs at least five hands: one to open a locker, two to hold the contents in place, another to find the required ingredient, and of course, one to hold on tight to stop themselves being thrown across the boat. Being 60% down on this complement creates constant problems!

To get ingredients out of the fridge, the procedure is this: take the two cushions off the berth above it, balance them on the next door cushions. Take up the plywood berth support, and balance it against the table, without scratching the cabin floor. Bend sideways around the table to lift up the lid of the fridge, and look around, as always, for somewhere stable to put it. Decide, as always, that for the few seconds it will take to find the broccoli, the lid will be just fine, balanced on the edge of the fridge. Choose a calm moment, let go of the lid with one hand, and dive into the fridge. The boat lurches, as always, and between stopping the plywood from banging against the table support and the cushions from going flying, let go of the lid entirely. Take fingers out of the way smartly as the lid shoots towards you. Vow, as always, that the next time you will find a proper place to put the fridge lid.

Repeat.

Having got the broccoli out, replace the lid and the plywood (again without scratching the cabin floor), retrieve the cushions from the other side of the cabin and put them back too. Retrieve the broccoli from wherever it has rolled to (round vegetables on a boat are a bad idea. Give me a nice flat broad bean, it stays put).

Finally, and this is the key bit, remember that you also needed to get out the potatoes.

Repeat.

Despite all this we have eaten well: chicken curry (followed by curried chicken soup for lunch), seafood risotto (followed by seafood soup for lunch, you begin to see the pattern?), then pork chops with apricots and garlic, new potatoes and broccoli, and finally tonight something quite like kofte, made with something Portuguese that was quite like cracked wheat.

30th September

Tuesday 30th September 2008, day 73, 23.11 pm. 36° 12’.7 N, 012° 45’.2 W. On passage to Madeira

There is phosphorescence in the sea tonight. I have had several attempts at finding a good way of describing the magic of it, but this is what it is like: it is like sailing, in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the night, when the sea is black and the moonless sky is star-spangled grey, and you are the only person awake for as far as the radar can see, and as the boat rushes through a wave, the foam is thrown up white and shot right through with tiny globes of light, over and over again, and all you can see is the rushing waves and the glittering sea. That’s what phosphorescence is like.

The boat’s loos work on sea water, so in these conditions, it’s as if we’re flushing the loo with starlight. I just hope the plankton feel as poetic about it.

At night I am struck, more than ever, by the bravery of the explorers who set out across the oceans armed with little more than optimism and faith – and the hope of wealth and glory. On a moonless, cloudy night, there is almost no light at all, and you cannot even see the waves until their crests break. We have GPS and charts, so, apart from a log or a container, we know that there’s nothing for us to run into. We surge on into the darkness, confident that we know exactly where the next piece of land is.

Not only did the early explorers not know if the lands they were looking for existed, they didn’t know what other land or rocks might appear in their way, on which they could suddenly be wrecked. When they found land, would it appear over the horizon during the day, so they could reconnoitre and choose the safest-looking bay to land in? Or would the first they knew of it be the sound of waves breaking on the rocks ahead, still invisible in the darkness? We only know the names of the successful explorers, those who found land safely and returned. The names of those who were wrecked earlier on the same islands have vanished for ever.

We have seen two birds so far, a pair of juvenile gulls. They came in to land a few feet away from us, red legs extended as they slowed their glide, just hanging there until a wave came up to meet their feet, then they stalled and subsided gracefully and sat there bobbing up and down, just in case we threw some rubbish over the side.