7 days to go!

Las Palmas marina has been filling up with yachts flying ARC+ flags, in fact the marina looks full not to mention the main ARC fleet of 200 slowly arriving! The staff are very well practised and efficiently chuck out resident boats 🙂

Our crew, Nick & Carol arrived last week meaning we are now fully crewed. Nicks keen eye has led to some improvements to our set up making sail changes quicker and safer…. he is actually enjoying spending my money! We have sheets (ropes) set up all along the deck now and have also lashed the petrol generator on the coach roof.

This means when we need to use it for the watermaker we don’t have to lift it out of a locker which could be impractical at sea. We hired a car for 3 days and managed to get to see some of Gran Canaria, passing the airport on the way south. There we saw a large number of wind turbines indicating that area has a lot of wind, which we will pass by next week!

The ARC office opened and we were allocated a check in time. This involved confirming our details were complete and up to date, issuing crew passes, papers and allocating a time slot for our yacht safety inspection. Fortunately we were well prepared as our inspection was booked in 4 hours after our check in !  Our inspector was Chris Tibbs who is very well known as a blue water sailor and weather guru. Everything was fine and we can now relax and enjoy the build up including the many sundowner drinks and pontoon parties.

Provisioning is now taking place, we decided to carry enough to last all the way to St Lucia just in case the Cape Verde stopover was short on items which we can easily get here in Las Palmas.

Our next entry will be on the start day in 7 days. Hopefully we will be able to update the blog daily via SSB or sat phone, but you will be able to track our progress through the official ARC website which give position updates every 4 hours.