Cruising the Canaries
04 November 2009 | Lanzarote
First Mate Hels
Hola from the Canary Islands. Wow what a fantastic place Lanzarote is. We have now spent over a week here and are absolutely loving it. The island is essentially a mass of volcanoes with an arid dry lunar landscape in between high extinct volcanoes. Amongst the strange surrounds, a unique architecture exists driven by this amazing man Cezar Manrique who was the main force in ensuring the island was protected from mass development and that the buildings are all beautifully designed. His influence is everywhere and consequently the island has a laid back grooviness which is very appealing. Based at Puerto Calero halfway down the eastern coast, a yacting paradise, we have been able to explore the island which can be circumniagted in one day. We have had a brilliant 3 days with our good friends Cath and Julien West/Fouter and their 3 gorgeous daughters checking out some tourist sights. We also went for a great daysail with them out to an island for lunch. The kids had a ball swimming, motoring around in Nicorina and generally hanging out. Jesse managed to catch his first sizeable fish which was a real thrill for us all. Hope we have such success across the Atlantic. Captain Tykes - boat boy extraordinaire - who we had thought had an iron stomach - managed to chuck up on the way home in the stiff 20 knot beat. The other highlight of the last few days has been meeting a bunch of other ARC and Blue Water Rally boats (a 2 year circumnavigation) including a bunch of family boats. The kids managed to get themselves on the Halloween prowl and tonight are off watching a video at another family's boat. As a lot of these boats will cross the Atlantic and then on to the South Pacific it is very exciting to be making new friends. Soon we will be in Las Palmas getting ready for the ARC where we will meet the other 225 boats with a total of 32 kids on board. Yeehah say the kids!! Over and out Hels.