Eric and Karin had left. Ben and Tes had left. Joel, Ariadna and Noe had left. So it was time for us to go from Gran Tarajal. There were 2 options: go on an overnight trip without any breaks and reach Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in the morning or go to Morro Jable to spend the night and from there wake up in the morning and reach Las Palmas de Gran Canaria before dark. We chose the 2nd option as we wanted to avoid an overnight trip.
So we left Gran Tarajal at midday and went on a 3 hour trip to Morro Jable. The 1st leg of the trip there was too little wind and non-existent waves, however, in the 2nd part was really windy and the waves started picking up so we started heeling. After The Storm I was a bit frightened of big heeling. Heeling can also seem unnatural at first as it feels like you are constantly on the verge of capsizing but you get used to it.
Morro Jable
When we reached Morro Jable we called on the VHF. They didn’t answer. We called the 2nd time and finally they did. As I was not too keen on speaking on the VHF and Spanish back then – I asked if they could speak English. The answer was no. That was okay, I understood him. He told us to come to the fuel pontoon so we did. There was no one there waiting for us, causing us to doubt that we were actually at the fuel pontoon. Then we called again and he came.
Next was trying to park Mistress at the fuel pontoon as it was on an uneven concrete block which could damage her. He just looked at us trying to reach the cleats and as the boat was going further away from the high concrete block. Mistress is quite short and the concrete block was high, making it impossible for us to climb up the block to tie the boat. Finally somebody else helped us and we parked and fuelled.
Then he told us that we could park at the pontoons on the other side to stay overnight and he had to go. He also said that if we park the boat parallel to the pontoon we have to pay 3 times the normal price. So we were like “Okay, where and how??” but when we were about to ask he had already left. We went to find the place that he told us about and finally we found them. Then we started asking ourselves how to park perpendicularly without any assistance. There had to be somebody to give us the ropes to tie to the bow the the yacht plus the place were missing the ropes so we decided to park in parallel. I went down and I was about to tie Mistress only to realise that the pontoon was missing a cleat. My mum had already tied the bow and the rope was too short to reach to the other cleat. So we hit Mistress once or twice moving her backwards trying to reach the other cleat and we had no help with parking and there was no electricity or water on the pontoon. We went to the office to pay and surprise: they were trying to charge us 3 times the price. At least when we told them that there weren’t any available ropes to park perpendicularly they said okay and the charged us the only price.
We then talked to a French family on a catamaran who told us that in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria there weren’t any places and where they stayed it was really expensive. They then told us that in a couple of days they would go to the Cape Verdes because they had already been there and they enjoyed it. Then we had and early night to wake up in the morning so we could go to Las Palmas.
On the 6th July we departed at 7 8 am in the morning. We had hoped to leave at 7 in the morning but, to our surprise, this is not England and sunrise is at 7:30am. The 1st part was bad and that made me sick for the whole journey but I tried my best to stay outside. We had crossed a ferry and I had joked that Joel was on that ferry and after 11 hours at sea we had reached Las Palmas. We entered the port where there was a sea of cargo ships at the anchor waiting to go in the port and then we found a peculiar obstacle: children learning to sail and to wind surf getting in our way. We were trying to avoid them but they were still getting in our way. My mum had a panic attack when she saw those children and every time there was one in front of us she thought we were going to hit them.
Well after succeeding in not hitting any children our next challenge was to find the reception pontoon which we soon found and then we were help by a guy working for the marina to park. We payed for 3 weeks and then gave us a place. The guys working for the marina were really nice helping us park. We also saw Eric waving from Marelief and when we parked and we were settled we phoned them. We agreed to see them the next day. After us, there were some English people who parked and became our neighbours, helping to fill up the pontoon we were on.
