The ARC is a rally/race that a lot of boats pay to enter and they race each other across the Atlantic. Our mates on Ghost, Brad and Kat, are racing with the ARC and today's the day they're leaving Las Palmas along with hundreds of other boats. Guess there's safety in numbers. We arrived this morning in Las Palmas after and overnight passage from Lanzarote Island and we're here to wave them off. The passage last night was reasonably comfortable with only a couple of moments that were interesting. The first thing that happened was that another catamaran that left Playa Blanca at the same time was tracking beside us nicely until sundown when he disappeared, having no steaming lights or navigation lights and he didn't show up on the radar. After trying to hail him on the VHF to find out his position, we were answered by another boat who had found him on his AIS system and could see him slightly ahead of us and to our port. Since he was faster than us, we felt confident he was clear of us. Later when I wash on watch and keeping an eye on about six mast lights I could see around us and on the radar, one of them started getting closer, slowly and over a period of about half an hour. Eventually he seemed to be coming uncomfortably close. He was on our port and his light was green indicating he was travelling in the same direction as us but converging on us. Now sometimes these are single-handed sailors who pop below for food etc and maybe he wasn't at the helm. I flicked on our deck lights that lit the boat like a Christmas tree. Well, he panicked and swung the boat so that instead of green, I was seeing a red running light. He obviously didn't realise how close he was either. He corrected his course again and ran parallel for another half an hour and began converging again. Now in the dark I could see he was a monohull. I flooded the boat with light again and this time he turned and crossed our stern, disappearing into night...thank god! We had the whole ocean and he had to snuggle up to us.
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Where will yo be for christmas
Off to the National Park for a look at the volcanoes and ride a camel and what an interesting place. It's been 400 years since the eruption and the place still looks so desolate. It looks like desert except that it's black and dark brown sand. The National Park is huge and they take you on a bus tour through the lava flows and past the craters. You end up at a restaurant that cooks meat over one of the vents coming up from the earth so we sat down for a roast chicken lunch. I took my shoe off to feel the floor and it was so warm even though there's a whole floor underneath dedicated to insulating the restaurant from the heat. Then they do a demo of erupting volcanic vents. On the way out we went for a camel ride ....FINALLY...after trying to find one in Morocco. What a hoot. Our camel was huge, mainly because Ray's huge and they had to balance his weight with me and a couple of sandbags. The hilarious moment, apart from the moment when our camel got up from the seated position and I thought I was going to be launched out of my seat, was Sam's camel. I swear it was an adolescent camel for an adolescent boy and you should have heard this camel complain. He moaned and whinged and poor Sam thought he was going to be thrown off. I didn't know whether he was laughing or crying as his camel stood up whinging and whining and turning and looking at him. It was so funny.
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20 November 2009, Playa Blanca, Lanzarote
Hired a car this afternoon and we're heading into Arreciefe to find the bulk meat place and a huge supermarket so we can do our final bits of provisioning for the crossing. We also need to get to a vet because Milo is due for his annual Rabies shot before the end of November. Argonaut found one in Puerto Calero so we're off to see that vet and hope she can do everything we need. The problem is that the Caribbean is a big bunch of individual island countries, all with different import requirements for pets. I need to get my head around them all, especially the ones we hope to go into from here.
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