They say that you can choose your friends but you can never choose your family. In Iain’s case although he hasn’t been able to choose his family, if he could, he couldn’t have chosen any better. Sue & Chris have braved budget airlines and the proletariat to make the journey to Tenerife where Iain & Fiona were sitting expectantly in Las Galletas after battling wind and rain and; in one of the few occasions in their lives, had arrived on time and in the right place.

Sue & Chris were taking the place of Santa Claus delivering kit that has been so hard to source whilst on our travels. They were also sending their fond farewells before Ruffian makes her first major ocean crossing in the coming weeks and all this whilst having some fun with the delights that this island can offer.

So why the delivery? Just for a moment imagine that you can’t get anything delivered to you from the internet, you can only shop at shops that you can walk to and that the things you need are relatively specialised. Mix into this that you never know where you’ll be and that customs are a nightmare, then you are starting to enter Ruffian’s world. Sue & Chris therefore came armed with SSB radios, pilot books, Raymarine spares, charts and rams to name a few, basically everything that we need to make a successful crossing of the pond. Their essential contribution to our trip cannot be underestimated and it is truly appreciated.

As we unwrapped the delivery there were smiles for miles and suddenly a realisation as to what we are about to undertake. Fiona unwrapped a chart called E100. This charts the whole of the north Atlantic and very quickly we realised that, although we have come a long way, we’ve got an awful lot further to go before we make landfall in the Caribbean.

With everything in place it was time to catch up with family and take in some of the delights of the island. The number 1 visitor attraction on the island is the volcano, so up and up we drove with the poor hire car making some worrying noises and shocking smells coming from under the bonnet. Banana plantations gave way to scrubland, scrubland gave way to rocky outcrops and finally the rocky outcrops gave way to miles of lava fields covered in frost. At 4000 meters the air was thin and the temperature a balmy 4 degrees, both of which came as quite a shock to Iain & Fiona as they stood around in their shorts and flip flops, clearly underdressed for the day.

We also had some errands to run whilst we had use of a car and primarily among these was to go to a liferaft service centre in the middle of Santa Cruz. We discovered on the drive that it’s not enough to have just a postal address as the street name doesn’t figure, so with some ESP, good guesswork and high levels of stress, we finally found the place. Second up was filling Ruffian with food for the next 30 days, so into Lidl we went and spent 300E on food. You would have thought that spending that amount in Lidls is nearly impossible, but that was the easy part of the operation. Finding places to stow it all on a little boat was the bigger challenge and now if you simply want to get a glass out you have to move bread, tortilla’s, crisps and biscuits. I think we’ll be drinking from plastic beakers for a bit.

With Ruffian looking nearly ready for the big trip we bid a fond farewell to Sue & Chris which was full of thanks and appreciation and slipped lines for a final few days of cruising on the island of Gomera. We’ll then be heading to Gran Canaria for the fitting of a sat phone and stocking up on fresh food before we tackle our biggest passage yet.

Fiona surrounded by all her ‘new toys’. Santa is coming twice this year makes Mrs Claus a happy wife.


Iain getting on and trying to get some of the ‘new toys’ working.


We took a tour (thanks Chris) of the volcano and lava flows. Did Fiona spot smoke from an eruption, just a cloud or was that dust on the lens?


We found the most amazing moonscape that has not changed sine the last eruption 250 years ago.


Fiona got into the more difficult bits of routing wires through the boat.


Now just where will all this food go?


Iain labels the lifering. A job which has only been on the list for 12 months.


Tip top dinner by the sea….


With a smashing tourist tastic desert.


The shopping continued. Ruffian has been loaded with 300 euro’s of food. We are now fully loaded for the big crossing.