Canaries

Our 500nm or so passage to the Canaries was uneventful if frustrating, mainly because we had to motor for 3 days. The sunset above is reddened and obscured by all the dust being blown off the Sahara desert, which just doesn't obscure the ocean 100 miles or so off the coast, but makes it all the way to South America, as we can attest from being in Trinidad in the springtime.

The magnificent Catedral de Santa Anna, in the heart of old Las Palmas.

La Casa de Colon' aka "Columbus' House", where he was reputed to stay while waiting for his ships to be readied to cross the Atlantic in search of Japan and the "Indies". That didn't quite work out but he did find a bunch of other stuff.

When we sailed here we'd heard that the Canaries were a good place to provision, but we hadn't expected what we found, which is that Gran Canaria is basically a huge shopping mall. It has some of the biggest grocery stores we've ever seen, anywhere. So, most of the time we've spent where was busy with shopping and boat repair. We don't expect major challenges crossing the Atlantic as it's mostly downwind in the trades, about as good as it gets. Nonetheless, it will be about 3 weeks at sea and we need to be prepared.

This is as far as we'll take this page for now. We leave in 2 days and will update stuff when we return to the Caribbean...

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