From Portimao to Morocco (Sept/Oct 2019)

After wintering in the Algarve, we were ready to move to our next destination: the Canary Islands. Several things happened during the short and cold days of the winter period.

First of all, a few additions to Gladan;

  • our electric scooters – essential to move around the town and go food shopping;
    scooters
    Great stuff!!
  • a new steamer so that our shower could turn into a Turkish bath (we haven’t tried it once since GC installed it, but apparently we needed one badly!);
  • a second jib, a carbon copy of the one we already had on board;
  • new trampolines (I almost fell through once in Salina, with 40+ knots of wind, while trying to close the code 0 and lift the anchor, so it was about time ;);
  • we changed the rigging, which, of course, was a major job and, it goes without saying, an expensive one. Gladan was deprived of her mast for 5 days and looked as naked and frail as never before. Someone (clearly not Gc) even said that she looked quite ugly (agreed!).
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The riggers at work on Gladan’s mast in the yard

Secondly, and most importantly, we decided to cross the Atlantic and build our new nest in the Caribbeans!

Yes!! Gladan will take part in the ARC and set sails from Las Palmas on 24th November en route towards St. Lucia! 

mastdownMast back up!

Once the main works were completed, we were ready to go to the Canary Islands. Our departure, though, kept being postponed. As it always happens on a boat, things break at the worst time possible. The “victim”, in this case, was the pump of our watermaker (quite an important piece of equipment!) which had ceased to function, and so we had to wait for a new one to arrive from Turkey. When it did arrive, the weather forecast looked terrible and we had to wait for the right window to be able to set off… So, instead of leaving sometime in August as planned, it was 5 am on the 23rd of September when we finally lifted the anchor and sleepily waved goodbye to Portimao in the dark. 

DawnGoodbye Portimao! First lights of dawn.

20 miles down the line, the sun shining and the sea breeze caressing our cheeks, Gc was staring at the forestays perplexed, sighing and rolling his eyes. It didn’t take long to understand that something wasn’t right…

When questioned on the nature of his troubles, he mentioned that the forestays were too loose and he didn’t like that at all. He sent a video to the riggers and 15 minutes later Gladan was changing her course. Instead of pointing towards Rabat, with its medina and casbah and the delicious tagines and veggie couscous that were already making my mouth water, we were now heading back to Portugal!

Once we got to the marina of Vilamoura, the riggers jumped on our boat and we went for a test sail just outside the port. They tightened the forestays, checked the mast and sails and jumped off Gladan 1 hour and 30 minutes later.

As a result, six and a half hours after our alarm had gone off, we were still quite close to Portimao. The only consolation to this long delay was a gigantic school of dolphins surrounding us and playing with us to lift our mood.

Dolphins – so many of them!

What looked like a reasonably sized incident at the time though had triggered the classic snowball effect. Because of this quite significant delay caused by the loose forestays, we missed our chance to enter the marina of Rabat 27 hours and 190 miles later. The marina of Rabat can only be accessed at high tide as the entrance is very shallow. Besides, you can only enter it if you’re escorted by the pilot boat as the waves break at the entrance and it can be quite dangerous to get in without an expert guide. Because of this quite significant delay, instead of spending 4 days in the beautiful marina of Rabat, we ended up in the industrial port of the refinery of Mohammedia!

MohammediaRefinery – Harbour of Mohammedia

The small (and apparently also quite expensive) marina of Maohammedia (12 berths) was fully booked and they didn’t even bother to answer us on the VHF when we got there around 8.30 pm.  

The only thing left to do at that point was anchor off the breakwater outside the refinery, as advised on Navionics. Once there, we called the Port authorities on channel 11 to inform them that we had arrived and asked for permission to spend the night there. Permission granted! I was so happy that we could finally stop and sleep that I didn’t care about the surroundings: the smell of gas and rotten fish and the massive cisterns around us. It all looked great after 40 hours of navigation!

On our way to the harbor, we didn’t see any fishing nets. Before embarking on our crossing to Morocco, I read on many blogs that approaching harbors at night could be a nightmare because of the myriads of fishing nets spread all along the coast – as far as 30 miles off the coast. Someone even said 100 miles off the coast!

We definitely didn’t see any when approaching Mohammedia at night. It was all clear …and the following day I would discover why ;)!

ARC 2019 – Gran Canaria to St. Lucia

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ARC 2019 Pre-departure PARADE

We spoke about it for years.

We dreamt of it after watching countless videos every night before going to sleep.

We read blogs of other adventurers and listened eagerly to the stories of the many sailors we’ve met along the way. Starting with the anecdotes of Amaltea’s crew (we met them in Leros, Greece, where our sailing adventures started from), who sailed around the world twice passing through Cape Horn and Good Hope aboard a beautiful 21 meters ketch; and ending with the tales of an 80-year-old man, Mark, who keeps crossing the Atlantic accompanied only by his beautiful green-eyed cat, Sheela.

Sheela.jpg
Sheela relaxing onboard a sailing yacht – Marina de Portimao. She’s the black spot through the ladder’s steps 🙂 Apparently, Sheela belonged to another boat, but one day she jumped on Mark’s boat and didn’t want to leave, so she got adopted by him or, as he likes to say, he was chosen by her. We used to see them walking side by side along the pontoons of the Marina de Portimao, faithful companions of adventure :)!

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The crew ready to depart from Las Palmas

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Fishing gear ready!

Well, after so many years of planning and dreaming and sharing other people’s stories, the time has finally come: Gladan is crossing the Atlantic!

We signed up for the ARC 2019 and together with other 200 boats, Gladan has set sails from el Muelle Deportivo de Las Palmas on 24th November at midday and is currently on its way to Santa Lucia, in the Caribbeans!

Over the past year, Gladan has been getting ready for the big crossing, undergoing a complete change of the rigging as well as several checks of the safety equipment on board (liferaft, lifejackets, EPIRB…).

She also got a new folding propeller – somehow we managed to lose one between Morocco and La Graciosa…but that’s another story!- a new watermaker pump, a Jordan drogue, a second jib, a John buoy, all kinds of anti-chafe materials, sails repair pieces of equipment and bits and bolts that were compulsory in order to participate in the ARC.

It’s been a long and tiring process but now Gladan is on its way!

After 2 full days of navigation, Gladan is positioned 3rd in its category with roughly 2,490 Nautical Miles still to go.YB

The Skipper, GC, sent me a message yesterday, after the first 24 hours, to say that the crew is in high spirits and that they were making good progress.

I’ll keep you posted with updates from the Atlantic! Fair winds to all the ARC sailors!

If you want to check the boat progress live, download the YB app on https://www.worldcruising.com/arc/arc/eventfleetviewer.aspx

fiesta
ARC Dress UP party!!