Hello again this time from Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Doug Williams our friend from Lorne arrived in Rabat, Morocco on schedule. We spent a day going over the boat with Doug and checking out the markets on the day before we were planning to leave. As it happens we had some extra local currency which we had to spend so Julie and I went out to a flash local restaurant for our last night. Doug opted out and had an early night on Hullabaloo. Unfortunately the flash restaurant dealt Julie a bout of food poising and she was crook as a dog so we could not leave for a few days. After that the swell was too big to cross the bar so we were delayed for about a week. Not too hard to take really because apart from the food poisoning episode we really enjoyed our time in Rabat.
Anyway eventually we left and had an interesting sail for 4 days down to Lanzarote the closest of the Canary islands. Conditions varied from no wind at all with drizzly rain to 25 knots behind us with a large and confused swell for a day and a half and then back to no wind and sunshine. Arrived in Lanzorote with perfect sunshine and warm weather. The island was a complete surprise. Stunning volcano landscape dotted with low rise white houses. A large low pressure system was working it`s way across the Atlantic so again our departure has been delayed. We hired a car for 2 days and toured the island which was quite amazing due to the interesting lanscape.
After this we decided to head to La Palma, the most Western island which would put us a couple of days closer to the Caribbean whilst waiting for the the right conditions to head off. This turned out to be a bit of an adventure because although not predicted during our second night we got belted by 45 knots winds on the nose and had to retreat back to Tenerife where we are now waiting for the right conditions to leave. We were able to sail right down the lee side of this island to the Southern end so as it happens we are approximately the same distance from the Caribbean as we would be if we were in La Palma.
Doug is going well and we are getting along well together. However with the delays we will now be arring in Antigua very close to Christmas. Doug is in the process of trying to change flights and hopefully this will work so he can continue on with us across the Atlantic.
We are watching the weather closely and it looks like we will be setting sail on Tuesday afternoon. The trip across is about 21 days so the next blog update will be after that hopefully from Antigua in the Caribbean where we are meeting Kristen and Matt, our children, for Christmas. We are really looking forward to catching up with them again after 6 months away.
The fishing and surfing has been a bit lean with only one fish caught so far and hardly any surfing. The surfing has had to take a back seat to the sailing and all the learning required for us to get comfortable with the trip.
We hope you are all well and look forward to updating you with the next installment just prior to Christmas on the other side of the Atlantic.
Cheers from Craig, Julie and Doug on board Hullabaloo in the Canary islands.
