T-1 week to Cast Off
The atmosphere here in the Las Palmas marina has become increasingly vibrant over the last few days. Sailboats have completely filled the marina and an overflow of 30 or so more are anchored just outside the breakwater. Most have colorful country and signal flags running up to the top of their masts, and home-country ensigns on their sterns.

New crew members with sail bags over their shoulders arrive daily, wandering down pontoons looking for their boats and itching to settle into their berths. Our buddies Tasha and Douglas arrived in Las Palmas today and will join this parade and move onto Ithaka later this week. Some itinerant sailors have arrived hoping to gain passage on boats needing crew - we have had to say "no thanks"to over a dozen folks who stopped by our boat hoping for a spot. Next Sunday over 100 boats will leave the marina and head toward the trade winds and the Caribbean.

We have had a good last few days. We arrived in Las Palmas needing 2 final major repairs. Our furling mainsail has been finicky since the Irish Sea, when it decided not to work in the middle of a nighttime squall. Workarounds allowed us to get down to the Canaries, but thoughts of towering thunderheads coming at us in the middle of the Atlantic with no way to reduce sail was terrifying - we definitely needed to get it sorted. So we waited anxiously all day Monday for the Alisios rigger to come to check out the problem...tick, tick, tick... When they finally came on Tuesday they opened up the mast and found that we needed parts from Sweden.


Our hearts sank - the last part we tried to order was returned to sender by Portuguese customs after hours of multilingual haggling. Not to worry, we were told, the parts would be here next Monday. Sigh, we've heard that before. But then a covid-supply-chain-miracle took place, and the parts arrived on Friday and were installed on Saturday. The sail furls in and out beautifully. Sweet.

The other big problem was with our generator. We use about 250 amp-hours of electricity every day for lights, freezer, water maker etc and rely on the generator to recharge the batteries when we are offshore. Unfortunately, about 2 weeks ago the generator wheezed, flashed an ominous "exhaust system overheat" message, and quit. No problem, probably some seaweed in the water intake. We cleaned the saltwater strainer, but got the same result. So we also had an appointment with a Rolnautic generator technician on Monday. They came, opened up the generator...and found that the impeller on the pump had turned to dust.

And...er...they had just sold the last impeller they had in stock, but not to worry, they would have more in shortly. Tick...tick... tick. But once again, the supply gods were with us and the part came on Thursday and was installed on Friday.

With these items taken care of, it feels like we are on the home stretch of our preparations. We will spend this final week orienting Tasha and Douglas to the boat, provisioning our perishables, and trying to think of all the things we have forgotten.