Arrived in Africa

20º50.721' N
17º01.805' W

Oops! -- I knew Robert shouldn't have left me in charge of navigating in the bay!


Just kidding :)

The Baie de Cansado was littered with half-sunken ships like this one, not due to any storms or accidents, but just out of neglect. There was also a lot of dust and acrid smells in the air from the nearby iron factories.

As a result, we had mixed emotions as we arrived after four days of sailing -- relieved to have made it, but unsure of what to expect next.

Back to El Hierro

27º47.105' N
17º54.085' W

We set out for Africa at 9 AM this morning, but after two hours of sailing, unexpected force 7 winds from the west forced us to turn around and come back to the same pier we'd just left (the only one on the island).

Shortly after we finished docking, the wind picked up and started slamming the boat against the concrete wall of the pier, which was designed for ferries and other boats much bigger than ours. Since we were only tied on our port side, (the side that was getting slammed,) we couldn't simply tighten the lines on the opposite side to counter the wind. Two fenders were popped and one stanchion got bent nearly 90 degrees.

While we tried to figure out what to do, all five of us were on deck, pushing against the wall as hard as we could to try to cushion the force of the wind. Eventually, we found a safer place further inside the pier and moved the boat there, after which we all celebrated and then promptly collapsed.

Unfortunately, I don't have any snapshots of this mayhem, but here are some photos from our rental-car tour of El Hierro, which I hadn't prepared in time for yesterday's post:




We'll try to set sail for Africa again tomorrow.

El Hierro

We arrived in El Hierro yesterday at 6 PM, and we're heading out tomorrow morning for Mauritania, a four-days' sail away.

27º47.069' N
17º54.075' W

Last night, I finally got my act together and prepared some photos for the web. The following are basically in chronological order.

Fuerteventura:



Gran Canaria:






Herve and Martine:


La Gomera:



"Water-sitting" (Herve demonstrating):



Ocean view:


Dolphins!!! During our sail from La Gomera to El Hierro, a whole group of them appeared out of nowhere and swam right alongside the boat. They stayed for five minutes, and then left as quickly as they had come:





Lastly, a couple of panaromas (stitched with DIS v11). The first one is from Lanzarote, and the second from the top of El Teide in Tenerife. Click for full image: (WARNING -- files are large!)



Next stop: Africa.

San Sebastian, part deux

28º05.336' N
17º06.460' W

We're back in La Gomera for one night, just stopping here on our way to El Hierro. The reason for the small loop in our itinerary is that we needed to be on Tenerife over the weekend to catch a couple of airline flights. We dropped off Herve and Martine at the airport on Saturday, and this morning we picked up Anne (whom I know from before), and a new couple, LouLou and Annie. The three of them will be travelling with us for the next month. (They all speak French.)

The past week included a new water sport for me, which I have dubbed "water-sitting." It basically just consists of sitting in a harness tied to the spar off the front of the bow while the boat cruises along. It's as much or as little exercise as you want it to be -- you can waterski barefoot or hang upside down with your head in the water or just sit there and enjoy the new perspective. For me, the most strenuous part was just getting into the harness, since the first two times I tried, the harness came untied and I had to cling to the spar for dear life.

Last Thursday, before we sailed to Tenerife (and "water-sat" along the way), we anchored in a cove along the eastern cliffs of La Gomera for a few hours and did some snorkeling and swimming. The area was completely secluded, and the water was clear and refreshing. The snorkeling was really fun for me: in addition to seeing a few interesting fish, it was neat to see the underside of the boat for the first time.

On Friday, we went to the top of El Teide, the main mountain on Tenerife and the highest elevation point in all of Spain. We took a cable car to the base of the summit and then hiked around for a couple hours. The view was very nice, but I was a little bit light-headed from the thin air. We were disappointed that we weren't allowed to go all the way to the peak because we hadn't obtained a special permit in advance, but perhaps that was for the best...

During today's short sail, we saw some dolphins in the distance and followed them for a little while.

All in all, it's been an exciting week. Sorry I don't have any pictures to post -- I took a bunch, but I haven't gotten a chance to sit down and prepare them for the web yet.

Sorry also for the dearth of information on my blog regarding our adventures on Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria. They were both very beautiful islands, but we didn't do anything too exciting on either one -- just more of what has become our routine of renting a car and exploring the island. (I've also become reasonably proficient at driving stick-shift, so it no longer seems newsworthy when I don't run anyone over.)

That's all for now. Hope everyone's doing well!

Tenerife

28º14.830' N
16º50.605' W

On a pontoon in Los Gigantes.

La Gomera

28º05.340' N
17º06.462' W

We sailed overnight to arrive here in San Sebastian.

Agaete

28º05.998' N
15º42.706' W

We have two new guests on board, Herve and Martine, who joined us this morning and will be with us for a week. The lingua franca on Errance is now back to French... which means we do a lot of pointing to communicate :)

One month

It's been one month since I first stepped aboard Errance in Lisbon. It hadn't seemed that long, and I hadn't felt like much had really changed until I framed it that way. Then I became aware that, actually, a lot has happened and a lot has changed.

I'm not trying to say anything deep and insightful or anything... just looking back and observing how far I've gone.

On a related note: on the way to Las Palmas, Robert remarked during our 2 AM watch change that I had just sailed my 1000th nautical mile.

Gran Canaria

28º07.714' N
15º25.508' W

We're docked in Las Palmas.

Fuerteventura

28º44.440' N
13º51.890' W

Arrived in Corralejo.

Lanzarote

Lanzarote lives up to expecations -- it is amazing! We arrived on Wednesday evening and docked in the Puerto Calero marina, on the southeast coast of the island.

28º55.026' N
13º42.041' W

First, a few pictures of the Salvagem island we stopped at, and a representative of each species of its animal inhabitants:





Below is the treacherous dock where I fell in the water. Our dinghy is the one closer to the water. My clothes and belongings are drying in the other dinghy, which belongs to the island office.


The two officials were very friendly, even though they were anxiously awaiting a boat to relieve them of their duty. The boat was two weeks late, so I think they were just happy to see some new people. The first thing they asked us was if we had any cigarettes. Having none, we offered them some chocolate instead. They accepted.

Next, some pictures of Isla Graciosa:





We had a perfect day of sailing for our trip from Isla Graciosa to Lanzarote. Warm weather, strong wind from the northeast, the current going with us... and no seasickness!

A couple pictures of me steering the boat -- I think I'm rocking out to U2 in the second photo:


Check out that scruffy facial hair from a month of unkempt unshavenness!

Okay, back to Lanzarote. When we arrived in Puerto Calero, the first thing we noticed was the abundance of racing sailboats in the marina. It turns out that there is a trans-Atlantic race that departs from here in the next few days.



Like in Madeira, we rented a car to explore the island, but this time the rental agency required that the driver be at least 25, so Robert is driving the car while we're here. You lucked out, drivers of Lanzarote!

On Thursday, we explored the north side of the island. A large portion of the architecture on the island is the brainchild of artist César Manrique, and we stopped at his bizarro former-home-turned-museum, which was built over a stream of petrified lava.

Some of his work on the island:




Today, we took the tour of the Timanfaya volcano park. The park is very touristy and crowded, but definitely worth the visit. The volcanoes in that region of the island erupted intermittently between 1730 and 1736, leaving an incredibly scarred and eerie landscape. Most of the island is covered in black lava rocks, but there are streaks of red and orange in sections of the island as well. The resulting impression I have of Lanzarote is sort of a crossbreeding of Arizona, Spain, and the moon.

Images from Lanzarote:









We will be departing for Fuerteventura either tomorrow or Sunday. It's supposed to be a lot greener, which will be weird after our visit to the moon.

Isla Graciosa

29º13.702' N
13º30.214' W

In the Canary Islands now. We arrived around noon today. Nothing particularly noteworthy for the remainder of the way here. The patch did its trick, so I was able to do my shifts without any problems. I didn't dare do any reading on the way, for fear that it would upset my stomach, so I listened to a LOT of music.

Isla Graciosa is one of the smallest and least touristy islands. It's peaceful and nice, if a bit boring. But boring is great, as long as it's stable! Tomorrow we head for the neighboring Lanzarote, which is supposed to be one of the most spectacular islands.

I like sailing... but I also like land.

Salvagem Islands

Saved!

30º08.312' N
15º52.352' W

We arrived at the larger of the two Salvagem Islands at 1:30 PM today. The sea conditions were not very good, and Robert would not have stopped, except that I was so sick and needed a break.

At first we just anchored, but we didn't feel very secure, since if the anchor slipped, we would be in danger of being pushed into the sharp rocks and cliffs of the island. Fortunately, there was a mooring buoy that we could attach ourselves to. It's normally used by military ships, so it was a very large and unwieldy buoy -- tying ourselves to it was no easy task. For our first attempt, I steered the boat and ended up hitting the buoy head on. (Oops!) Robert suggested that we switch roles after that, and I managed to hook us onto the buoy.

Because of the choppy sea conditions, the boat was still rocking a fair amount, but I felt considerably better. Later in the afternoon, we took the dinghy to the shore. The dock on the island was mossy and extremely slick, and I ended up falling into the water and getting completely soaked. Luckily I wasn't hurt, and the adrenaline rush that I got from the ordeal actually made me feel even better.

The island was quite deserted: the only inhabitants of the island were two people who were stationed there, two dogs, and a bunch of terns that nested in the rocks.

After tramping around the island for a couple hours, I felt back to normal and quite happy. There was definitely a 5-point swing in my happy-o-meter in the span of a couple hours -- something like going from a 3.8 to 8.8. B+!

I'll post some pictures of the island later. It's a national protected reserve, and we had to get special permission to visit it. It's actually kind of barren and empty, and Robert said he'd be happy to forget it. To me though, it was Salvation Island, an oasis of paradise!

Back on the boat, I put on a Scopalmine patch to help with the seasickness. I had used one on our trip from Sines to Madeira, but had decided to try going without one for this trip, in an attempt to adjust "naturally" to the sea. Forget that -- I'm sticking to the patches from now on!

We're staying the night here to rest and recover, and we'll continue our journey to Canarias tomorrow morning.

If SEA = HOME

then SEASICKNESS = HOMESICKNESS.

Ugh, so seasick. [Spew of self-pity, self-doubt, other dark thoughts omitted here...]

Last week, Robert told me of a saying that in the first twenty-four hours of seasickness, you feel like you're going to die; after seventy-two hours of being seasick, you wish you would die. In hour twenty-eight of my own seasickness, I just wanted to kill whoever made up that quote, since that was all I could think about.

We left Madeira and said farewell to Chris at 9 AM on Saturday. I then spent almost all of the next twenty-eight hours in my cabin. Lying down, I didn't feel so bad, in fact pretty decent at times. Sometimes I felt good to the point where I would get up, thinking I was okay to do a shift, only to feel nauseous again, contribute a little more to the bucket by my bed, and lie back down.

I stopped eating because anything I ate just ended up coming back up (lots of ramen, a couple Tuc crackers). I also stopped drinking anything, because I didn't want to have to use the head, which would require me to get up and go to the bow. So I just lay quietly in my dark cabin and thought and slept and thought some more... I might have whimpered a few times too :)

Also, I felt really guilty and sorry for Robert, who had to sail through the entire night on his own.

Ugh. Seriously, ugh.