Captain's Log, Halloween, 1998
La Gomera, Canary Islands
We left Funchal on Thursday noon, and had a very fast run to La
Gomera, 304 miles in 52 hours, a record for us. En route, we thoroughly cleaned the bilges and topped off the batteries, so the boat is happy with us. While here, we will also clean the Funchal harbor gunk off the sides of the hull. Midway here, we ran into an easterly wind with a haze of very fine red dust, the Harmattan wind from the Sahara desert, which plagues the Canary Islands from time to time. Not really surprising, since the west coast of Africa is only 200 miles to the east of us right now. We picked up the coast of Tenerife on radar at sixteen miles, but never saw it, even though we passed within 4 miles. We couldn't see Gomera until we were 2 miles away. Under normal conditions Pico Teide, the 12,000-foot volcano in the center of Tenerife, can be seen as far away as 100 miles. We are tucked snugly into the fine, cheap, modern, new marina in San Sebastian de Gomera, where we will stay for 2 weeks or so. Connie is flying in next week, and we look forward to exploring the island with her. From here, we can also take ferries to the 2 other equally remote islands of the Western Canaries, Hierro and La Palma. We may also go to one of the larger islands, Tenerife or Gran Canaria for boat supplies before moving on. The skiing here is not very good, and it's hot and muggy at the moment, but we can take all the cold showers we want, so no hay problema.
Hasta luego,
MR