On 2nd December 2021 we embarked on our extremely long journey to San Miguel, Tenerife of 5 hours. I couldn’t wait to go back to Tenerife to celebrate the holidays but as they say “Be careful what you wish for”.
We left La Gomera on a quite windy day – it was like God was warning us to not go. I didn’t know how to get to the back to safety as quickly as possible. The sea was choppy (I was putting in the fenders and tidying the ropes) as we were going in the opposite direction of the waves and wind, however, when we got behind Teide everything changed: the wind had gone, there were no waves and the sun had come out. We saw a pod of pilot whales as well as dolphins. For more than 3 hours it was a pleasure to be at sea. Then my dad called me back worried because the GPS had stopped showing him our position. The moment I had reached the cockpit, the wind had started along with the waves. I took my phone out to look on OpenCPN and it was working (so we used that for 45 minutes).
Then we reached the marina so we called them on the VHF to which a girl answered “go to foxtrot 16”.
A disoriented me - after the unwelcoming sea - asked “Sorry, weren’t we in a different place”. We were given a place when we made a reservation hence knew exactly where to go but now we had no clue. There was also heavy wind which didn’t help.
She replied “There was a change. I’ll show you where it is”.
So we came in looking for her. We spot her on the other side of the marina in a golf cart shouting at us to look at her and follow her. We lost her when she went behind the shipyard so we called again. Nobody answered. We went to find the place – impossible as the numbers weren’t displayed – only to give up. Therefore we decided to turn around to go out of the marina and call again. Nobody answered so we called until she answered that she’s waiting for us the place. We finally found her and difficultly parked in a tight space, with no pontoons on the side, bow first. It was the type of parking where you were given two ropes that were anchored by them to tie on the other side. Back to the story, I gave her the rope only to realise that she didn’t really know how to tie a rope. Luckily, somebody else helped us.
A disappointed me struggled to climb out of the bow of the boat. This was not what I expected. There were over 20 knot winds which it a bit uncomfortable to park and added to the discomfort as I always had hair in my face (sometimes I envy short hair, even though, I wouldn’t dare to cut it short again). I didn’t like the parking space; we initially had a space with a pontoon but they changed it without telling us. I insisted that we only pay for 2 weeks and then pay for more if they change our space. They decided not to so we made plans to go back to La Gomera.
During our third stay in Tenerife my godparents happened to come so we visited: Teide for the third time, Los Cristianos for the third time and Santa Cruz de Tenerife for the second time. We had a great time as we hadn’t seen them in over 3 years and it was an excuse for us to visit the touristic places of Tenerife again.
San Miguel (where we stayed) is a golf resort. I don’t know how they found one of the most windy places in Tenerife to put a golf resort. Other than that it’s a really nice area if you like golf. There is just one problem… I’m not really a fan of golf myself. I learned that – if you’re not into golf – there is nothing to do there when it’s winter (because of the wind). There weren’t any shops there (I was missing the everyday food market) so you couldn’t find everything you needed and I just felt it was too touristic for me. It felt like a mini sunny England. In addition to this it was impersonal (because everybody was on holiday).
After I had seen La Gomera and La Palma, I started to see the flaws of Tenerife starting with ‘too touristic’ and ending with ‘too big’. It is incomparable with the small communities on it’s neighbouring islands so on 16th December 2021 we left to celebrate Christmas in La Gomera.
