Canapesia has arrived in Gran Canaria! Having set sail from Vilamoura on Monday afternoon, the crew have faced big seas and for two days a 30 knot headwind which forced them to change course and come within 30 miles of the North African coast to avoid the worst of the weather. Having come through this weather though they managed to cover 300 miles in the last two days and arrived in port a couple of days later than expected but cheery and in one piece.

Mark and Sim, who had joined the boat and Gary, Neil & Keith for the sail down will be around for the next few days to help sort out a few things. Dan and Shane are now both in Gran Canaria too and most of the on shore registration and pre arrival paperwork has been completed over the last week.

The next few days will be dedicated to making sure everything is ship shape for the weekend & the race start (25th November) - job number one is making sure the SSB radio is fixed up properly so we can keep all you lovely people up to date with our news (it wasn´t working on the sail down) and then getting food and supplies on board. Alongside this work there are various seminars to go to (everything from first aid to on board fitness) and time to get to know the other crews.

We´ll do our best to keep everyone up to date over the next few days via both Facebook and the blog and then from the 25th November we should be officially at sea and updating you via the blog posts only (which will auto post to Facebook).

Thanks for all your posts, emails and texts - much appreciated.

The Canapesia crew.