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Tomorrow morning, Tuesday 21 May, we plan to set sail from Pasito Blanco, Gran Canaria, for our next destination which will be Port Louis, Grenada.

We had planned on a stopover in St Lucia with Martinique as plan B, but the paperwork required for St Lucia is ridiculous - various forms signed, witnessed and stamped with the "Captain's stamp" and accompanied by two passport-size photos for each member of the crew, plus a 30% deposit paid in advance. The marina in Martinique didn't even respond to my booking request. So we are going to Port Louis in Grenada instead.

Predict Wind tells us that we should expect the wind to be from the north-east at a steady 17 knots, moderating to about 13 knots over the next few days. Our initial course of 240 degrees should put the wind on our starboard quarter, so it should be a good run. The great circle distance from Pasito Blanco to Port Louis is 2,750 nautical miles. I have planned the passage for 5 knots, which should see us arriving in Grenada on 13 June, in 23 days' time. If we average more than 5 knots that will be a bonus.

We have been waiting for our mainsail to be dispatched from Panama, and, at long last, it arrived in Gran Caneria today.

We hired a car for a few days and visited the capital, Las Palmas, where we got some bits and pieces, including new blocks (or pullies) to replace those that were damaged on our passage from Rota to Gran Canaria, as well as a new base for one of the guardrail stanchions which needed replacing.

We had a rigger here last Thursday to check and re-tension our standing rigging and to deliver the battens for our new sail. We have re-run some of the halyards, the mainsheet and the boom vang, and carried our a few repairs such as installing the guardrail stanchion.

The yacht is fully fuelled (140 litres in the tank plus two 20 litre jerry cans), and the water tanks are full (360 litres with an additional 56 litres in 8 litre plastic bottles). Washing has been done, charts and passage plan are up to date, provisions are stocked up, and we are ready to go. I even have Iridium GO! working to the extent that I can now send and receive an email from/to my Iridium email account (colin.maslen@myiridium.net). I should also be able to download limited updates from Predict Wind, but internet access will still be out of the question. Yesterday I ordered StarLink, to be delivered when we arrive in Shelter Bay, Panama.

A little bit about the Canary Islands: The marina at Pasito Blanco is quite good, with a club called La Punt at the end of the breakwater, and a small supermarket near the marina offices. However it is a bit isolated, about two kilometres from the nearest town, Maspalamos, which is very much a tourist centre populated mostly with British and European tourists.

However, our overall impression of Canary islands is that they are dry, desolate and not very appealing. There are numerous seaside villages, resorts, grand hotels and marinas around the coastline of Gran Caneria, some of which are looking very tired and run-down. Unless you are into the beach/pool culture, sailing, marlin fishing (at great expense) and maybe golf, there is not a lot to do. The landscape is rocky and barren with very little vegetation other than palm trees, cacti and small, spiky shrubs. The only grass you will see is on the golf course; elsewhere in the resorts and villages any "lawn" is mostly plastic turf. One positive feature of Gran Caneria - the roads are excellent!

The history of the Canary Islands is not very enlightening either. Early conquest by the Spanish, accompanied by the extermination or enslavement of indigenous people together with the brutal exploitation of African slaves, make Australia's colonial past sound quite benevolent.

I also learned that the name Canary Islands, Islas Canarias, has nothing to do with little yellow birds that sing sweetly in cages. It is likely derived from the Latin name Canariae Insulae, meaning "Islands of the Dogs", perhaps because monk seals or sea dogs were abundant. Wikipedia says that, according to the Roman historian Pliny, the Elder, the island Canaria contained "vast multitudes of dogs of very large size". The connection to dogs is retained in their depiction on the islands' coat-of-arms.

Apparently, archaeological analyses indicate that indigenous peoples were living on the Canary Islands at least 2,000 years ago, possibly 3,000, and that they shared a common origin with the Berbers on the nearby North African Coast. The islands may have been visited by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Carthaginians. King Juba II, Caesar Augustus's Numidian protégé, is credited with discovering the islands for the Western world. From the 14th century onward, numerous visits were made by sailors from Majorca, Portugal and Genoa.

In 1402, the Castilian colonisation of the islands began with the expedition of the French explorers Jean de Béthencourt and Gadifer de la Salle, nobles and vassals of Henry III of Castile. These invasions were "brutal cultural and military clashes between the indigenous population and the Castilians" lasting over a century due to formidable resistance by indigenous Canarians. After the conquest, the Castilians imposed a new economic model, based on single-crop cultivation: first sugarcane; then wine, an important item of trade with England. Gran Canaria was conquered by the Crown of Castile on 6 March 1480, and Tenerife was conquered in 1496, and each had its own governor.

The Canaries' wealth invited attacks by pirates and privateers. Ottoman Turkish admiral and privateer Kemal Reis ventured into the Canaries in 1501, while Murat Reis the Elder captured Lanzarote in 1585. The most severe attack took place in 1599, during the Dutch Revolt. A Dutch fleet of 74 ships and 12,000 men, commanded by Pieter van der Does, attacked the capital Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (the city had 3,500 of Gran Canaria's 8,545 inhabitants).
In 1618 the Barbary pirates from North Africa attacked Lanzarote and La Gomera taking 1000 captives to be sold as slaves. Another noteworthy attack occurred in 1797, when Santa Cruz de Tenerife was attacked by a British fleet under Horatio Nelson on 25 July. The British were repulsed, losing almost 400 men. It was during this battle that Nelson lost his right arm.

During the Second World War, Winston Churchill prepared plans for the British seizure of the Canary Islands as a naval base, in the event of Gibraltar being invaded from the Spanish mainland. The planned operation was known as Operation Pilgrim.

Well that's all folks! Next blog will be posted when we get to the Caribbean unless I can send Mandy an update midway across the Atlantic.

Postscript: On the port yard arm of Nessaru (at the top of the halyard from the first spreader on the mast) there is a small pennant with a red cross on a white background. It is the commissioning pennant from my old submarine HMAS Otway. At sea when the submarine was on the surface, the commissioning pennant was flown from the VHF whip aerial.