Las Palmas

November 6, 2009 -- Skylark is at Berth 13 on Pontoon T at the marina. We connect shore power and water and the coffee machine is the first piece of vital equipment to be deployed. After a quiet meal on board, we walked the little strip fronting the marina which has some restaurants and a few ship chandlers.  The town is a little further away with supermarkets and stores.  The old town is a half hour walk from the marina with older buildings and streets closed off as pedestrian malls. Las Palmas is surprisingly large and developed as a city,  The main trade is tourism with mainly northern Europeans making an escape from the winter chill.  The ARC is a major event for the city and the waterfront is bedecked with flags and signs.  This will be the 24th ARC to start off from Gran Canaria.

 Ed cleans the galley, Skylark and dinghy at the Las Palmas marina

Monday, November 9 -- we checked in at the ARC office and are assigned a Rally number and given an appointment for the safety check on Tuesday.  Our Rally number is 69 and there are some 220 boats expected in the final tally. We get a visit by "Jerry the Rigger" who gives us a free rigging inspection, courtesy of Skylark's insurer, Admiral Insurance of the UK.  Jerry climbs both masts and makes a complete inspection of the rigging and lifelines.  As might be expected, Skylark's rigging gets a clean bill of health.  We got some practical tips from Jerry on things to look for when inspecting the rigging while at sea. Most dismastings on sailboats are avoidable if problems are detected early and promptly rectified, or if sailing tactics are changed to put less stress on the rig.

  Another shot of Skylark at the Las Palmas marina.

Our safety check went OK.  Our safety equipment meet requirements and in some instances, exceed them.  Still, we got some good suggestions from the ARC safety inspector, Paul Tetlow, especially on making ready to deploy equipment should the need arise.  We also learned some things about our equipment which we had not been aware of.  For instance, the second antenna on top of the mizzen mast is dedicated to the AIS tranceiver.  If needed, the antenna could be used as a spare for the VHF radio should its own antenna become disabled.  We had to concede however, that despite our sophisticated collision avoidance electronics, a passive radar reflector had to be carried in the unlikely event of a total loss of power while under way.  We purchased one for 30 Euro and stored it in a cockpit locker, nicely out of sight.  Our inflatable life vests had new strobe lights installed on them which automatically come on if the vests are deployed.

Sunday, November 15 was the day the ARC was declared open with government officials from Gran Canaria and St Lucia gracing the occasion.  There was a parade of sorts with crews carrying their national flags down the street to a spot near the port office.  There are boats from 30 countries participating in this year's ARC.  The "parade" is accompanied by a brass band playing tunes like "Roll Out the Barrel" and is watched by locals and other yachties lining the street.  At the end of the parade, the flags are raised on a row of flag poles while canons went off in salute.  The Malaysian flag is carried by a motley crew -- one real Malaysian, a Texan and a Frenchman (both of whom have longstanding connections to Malaysia).  Ed has lived and worked in Malaysia and is married to Jun, a Malaysian the skipper has known for almost 40 years.  Francois has spent many years in Malaysia managing civil engineering projects.  We are asked by many about the flag and where we come from.  We left the questions to Francois who would answer without a trace of self consciousness "....Malaysia!"  So here are pictures of the parade:

Finally, a photo of friends from the Amel Super Maramu, Voyageur, David and Susan MacKay who are on their second circumnavigation.

 

We have begun provisioning in earnest.  Water, drinks, breakfast supplies, etc. and a large supply of half cooked bread which can be stored without refrigeration.  They only require 10 minutes in the oven, and the result is  fresh bread as if we'd gone out to the boulangerie in the morning.  We will get meat, eggs and vegetables a couple of days prior to the start on Sunday, November 22. The second deep freezer has been started up in preparation and the food inventory updated.

The Amel technical crew from La Rochelle turned up the morning of November 16 to retrofit the rudder post assembly.  This should fix the water intrusion while under way for good.  Nicolas, who we'd met at La Rochelle during Skylark's commissioning in July, is working on the problem.

We start out across the big ocean on Sunday.  Our limited email capability via the short wave radio will be used for daily position reports to the ARC and weather reports. The next blog post will be from St Lucia in the Caribbean. For those interested, the positions of boats in the ARC fleet are updated daily on the World Cruising Club website and Skylark's position should be available on the site.  We expect the crossing to take up to 20 days, perhaps less if winds are favourable.